Listen Up Candidates: 3 Ways Social Media Integrates with Traditional Media

What can the upcoming Presidential elections learn from the recent Olympics Games? Social media integration.

Whether part of their campaigning tactics or an integral part of how the Olympic events were talked about and watched, social media has evolved to work with and for traditional media.

Here is what your brand can learn about using social media for promotion, even when your brand appears elsewhere too.

• Decrease traditional coverage- Instead use interactive and integrated strategies that incorporate less television and more technology such as tablets and smart phones.

Because people prefer to learn your brand in different places.

• Share what is happening immediately - Social media puts breaking news at people’s fingertips so they don’t have to tune in on traditional media to see what’s going on. Sam Donnellon says social media allows for a “constant dialogue about what happened, what was happening right then, and what was coming up.”

Use social media to spark chatter outside your brand’s main touch point because it’s organic and timely.

• Direct people to a different channels- Whether that be a website, a different social media channel or even television.  People talked about how this Olympics were “world’s first social Games” but NBC still saw high ratings; an average of 31.1 million viewers. This was because online talk made people interested in what was happening on television.

Strengthen your brand’s consumer relationships by combining social media with traditional media. This allows consumers to interact with your brand in different ways from many channels.

Hopefully the Presidential candidates have successfully applied what we learned from the Olympics and integrated social media with their traditional approaches.

How do you integrate traditional and social media? If you are interested in making social media a part of your brand’s more traditional strategy, learn more about our programs and how we can help.