It’s fairly prevalent now to find larger brands ready to jump headlong into a sweeping social media strategy.  “We get it!” or “We know our customers are there!” It feels a lot like when athletes in interviews (or reality TV contestants) say things like, “We gotta step it up.” or “Take it to the next level.”

In both cases, the rationale drives some mythical achievement. Who are these customers? What is the next level? Engaging in social and distributed channels, to be truly effective for the brand, has to be brought back to the brand’s home site. Right now, brands are spending budget sending people running out to these outposts of communication, but they’re running out of gas, unable to make it home.

The next level may actually be refining the budget so you can not only communicate the brand in channels like Twitter, Facebook, Hi5, iTunes, but also to integrate the technology with the home site of the brand, and curate the best parts.

Ken Burbary does a great job collecting and analyzing current examples (read the comments, too. Lots of good ones) as this concept of integration is dawning on larger consumer-facing brands. I’ve talked about it a few times before as well, specifically about bringing Twitter back home, and pivoting off Dirk Shaw’s concept of integrating earned media.

Why should you invest incrementally in a digital strategy that integrates those presences with your main branded site? A few concepts that I hope will underline its importance:

Ownership

Literally. Taking the content that you or your customers create about you in social media is not owned by you. You’ve sunk the money, you’re generating the on-the-record goodwill. Why isn’t it on a server and a site that you own, too? Curate the best content that you’re monitoring or engaging in at the brand level and get

1. Return on your investment. Technology investments are immediately obsolete. At least retain the brand equity you’ve built.
2. Protection in experimental media. Who knows when the next Fail Whale or DOS attack or even a service going out of business will happen? What’s your backup?
3. Compounding Returns. Curating at the home site means you’re getting twice the niche exposure for an incremental cost increase.

Simply, contextually, the logo that appears at the top of the page wins. Have a place where your logo is at the top. Own the agenda somewhere.

Proof

Both brand proof “look at what we’re doing” and social proof “look at the people at our company and among our customers who are taking part in the cause of our brand.” Now the brand site can really be a living reflection of the work. And isn’t this a big part of why you’re engaging in social and distributed strategy in the first place? Integrating this is walking the walk at home and afar.

What’s next

A big problem in many campaigns is that they only allow for so much interaction. With a hub, you can give a user in any social or distributed network an easy “next step” into discovering (and you can’t underestimate the power of discovery), what other content you have to offer, and where else they can have access to it.

SEO

For most brands, the site where most people will begin forming opinions online is Google or some other search engine. People search using common phrases that come naturally to them. People also use social networks with common phrases that come naturally to them. See a pattern here? Integrating distributed content makes it easier for people using search engines to find you.

Acknowledging the brand as software developer

It’s all really about the fact that the old addage of “We’re not in the [enter technology here] business.” Which continues to linger in brands that need to start really taking on and developing software solutions, online or on the desktop. But that’s like saying that coke isn’t in the vending machine business, or the trucking business.

Software design and development is a logistical expense for communicating effectively and evocatively with an audience. It’s not going away, and I don’t think it’s an expense that can be carried forever from marketing or PR: two industries not known for taking on these deeper kinds of endeavors.

But since marketing and PR are the places most looked towards to carry the torch of integration, please plan your strategy to include the run back home. Your audience and your bottom line with thank you for it.

What do you think? Please continue the conversation here or on Twitter @mleis.

Related posts:

1. The Three Colorful Circles of Social Media Strategy
2. The Brand Cause: Focusing Social Media Strategy
3. Are Your Digital Joists Beveled?
4. Integrating Earned Media in the Purchase Path