How many times have you said “I hardly ever do any of the great things on my own doorstep” or “I can’t believe I’ve travelled half way around the world but haven’t visited my local...” when talking about missing out on the rather more ‘obvious’ activities in your own back yard?

We’ve been coming up against this a lot in social marketing for the past 18 months or so. As marketers scamper off to the big wide web to drive brand affiliation or sales, those in charge of the web or mobile presences are pressing on with their important stuff like security, basket size optimisation or just getting rid of that awful legacy CMS.

In the rush to adopt new communications opportunities presented by social behaviour, some marketers have missed the chance to turn their real owned channels – from website to bricks and mortar - into their smartest social assets.

In 2008, Facebook Connect was born, enabling users to log onto websites, apps, mobile devices and games with their ID and helping Zuck to create the largest social graph in the world. With the arrival of the ‘Like’ button we all began to see the awesome potential of putting Facebook functionality onto in places other than Facebook. But by then, the industry had got carried away with Facebook Pages. The opportunity to broadcast communications with a sense of control was like catnip to brands wanting to dip a toe in the social space without getting fully submerged.

Now, with a mobile ecosystem burning white hot, linking up mobile sites and applications to allow the activity and interests of users to spread out to their social graph is a smart move indeed. This is what Facebook call ‘social by design’ – organising business around people.

As we head deeper into a world where brands are investing in data stores that match up the myriad of different touch points to understand YOU in relation to THEM, it’s crucial that marketers understand what ‘social by design’ means for what they really own.

That means shifting our focus from what we want to say to what we want people to do and making compelling – and challenging – cases for trying new things.

As marketers, we’ll be pushed ever closer to our developer and data cousins, driven forward by hunger for knowledge about the customer. The recession, too, has played a part,  helping to break down some of these silos and force teams together as never before.

Here at Carat, we’re pulling on an ever wider number of resources and skills to understand how bought, owned and earned feed into understanding customer behaviour in a joined up way. We see the need to make recommendations to clients that go beyond the tactical, focussing on wider business objectives with an eye on the future and not just the next campaign.

As identity on the web becomes more and more entwined with our behaviour and that of friends and family, brands that manage to unlock the potential of their owned assets to put people at the centre of their business are the ones that will thrive.

And for that, ‘social by design’ has to go beyond the Page.