That's the million-dollar question, and it's where most strategies fall flat. The shift happens when you stop treating social media as a separate marketing channel and start treating it as the primary channel for storytelling, community building, and direct customer conversation that fuels everything else. It's about intentional integration. A great article I often reference lays out a complete framework for this. It covers how to build a brand foundation specifically for social, create content that drives engagement and action, measure the metrics that actually matter (like lead gen and customer acquisition cost), and includes case studies from companies that did it right. For a blueprint that links branding directly to business outcomes, check out this guide on social media marketing and branding.