همه ما متصل هستیم: قدرت اکوسیستم رسانه های اجتماعی

Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their respective brands. In turn, companies and organizations are looking to online social marketing programs and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they ‘live’ online. However, the challenge facing many companies is that although they recognize the need to be active in social media, they do not truly understand how to do it effectively, what performance indicators they should be measuring, and how they should measure them. Further, as companies develop social media strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are too often treated as stand-alone elements rather than part of an integrated system. This article offers a systematic way of understanding and conceptualizing online social media, as an ecosystem of related elements involving both digital and traditional media. We highlight a best-practice case study of an organization's successful efforts to leverage social media in reaching an important audience of young consumers. Then, we conclude with several insights and lessons related to the strategic integration of social media into a firm's marketing communications strategy.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, SCVNGR, YouTube, and numerous others have begun to revolutionize the state of marketing, advertising, and promotions. These social media have transformed the Internet from a platform for information, to a platform for influence. Because of the dramatic and global growth of social media such as Facebook (550 million users) and Twitter (100+ million users), companies of all sizes from different industries now view social media marketing as a mandatory element of their marketing strategy. However, it is no longer enough to merely incorporate social media as standalone elements of a marketing plan. Companies need to consider both social and traditional media as part of an ecosystem whereby all elements work together toward a common objective: whether to launch and promote a new product or service; to communicate a new company initiative; or to simply further engage customers in a rich, meaningful, and interactive dialogue.