Once upon a time, it took a while for brands to realize where social media should sit as part of the marketing mix. At that point, it sat on the periphery of teams and no one was really sure how and by who it should be handled. These days, social media is more widely recognized to be integral to marketing, customer service and corporate communications. 

That said, a lot of brands still fail to integrate social channels with other communications channels, paying little attention tot he role it plays in the wider customer lifecycle marketing strategy. 

Social media tends to take focus during the early stages in the customer lifecycle, in attracting and influencing a sale (for promotion).  It can however also play a part in later phases, such as repeat purchase remarketing, community engagement post sale, social customer service and in gaining feedback. 

New research (http://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q2-2016/) reveals though that most brands are still not paying attention to consumers who want communicate via the social platforms. In this survey (http://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q2-2016/), 90% of respondents said they had used social to communicate directly with a brand, with only 11% of users receiving a response. Meanwhile the brands sent out 23 promotional messages for every response provided to their fans. This means that the focus is very much on sales, rather than the rest of the lifecycle journey which can only lead to fan disengagement. 

1. Consider the touchpoints that social media has on your customer's interactive (from promotional content, presales questions, to post sales troubleshooting or advocacy)
2. Adapt your communications or contact strategy to integrate these into the full range of marketing communications channels to support prospects and customers on this journey.