The danger of siloing social media away from digital

It's almost impossible to look at social media as its own world. So many factors play a role in how people interact with a social platform. From the ad buy to the way a Google search landed on a corporate blog, it's all intertwined. 

Yet we appear to keep social in its own corner. The online media buying folks do their thing. The advertising people do their thing. The PR people do their thing. Yet the social person/team is expected to stay in their corner and focus on posting things to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, without much input into anything else. The few times the social person is asked for input and integration, it's at a minimum. 

It simply doesn't make any sense. It's not good for the consumer. It's not good for the company.

Which is why we will all finally see an end to the pure play department of social media.

The bar is finally going to be raised. The people who know the best things to post on Facebook and why will be expected to wrap their heads around a digital ad buy and what it means to weave in programmatic ad buys. People who know very little, if at all, about digital marketing are trying to quickly ramp up their knowledge. 

It will be an interesting next few years.