You've discovered SMM -- here's how to use to build your brand

By Jonny Buroker

In last month’s article, we covered some of the basics about Social Media Marketing (SMM) and how it can help build your brand and bring benefits to your organization through your participation in these online communities. In this article, we’ll provide a high-level overview of some of the top SMM sites, as well as a brief example of how you can use SMM as part of your marketing strategy.
 

Some of the top SMM sites
1. Facebook: originally intended for college students, Facebook has quickly become the No. 1 social media site with more than 1.2 billion visitors in January 2009.

2. MySpace: with more than 190 million members, this is the largest social networking site. However, according to my 17-year-old daughter, MySpace is so “yesterday”.

3. Twitter: allows you to share bite-sized updates (“tweets”) about your life and what you’re doing with friends and family.

4. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than 35 million members. LinkedIn helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with your trusted contacts.

5. YouTube: No. 1 video sharing site in the world. Allows you to easily upload and share video clips.

6. Flickr: a great Web site for hosting family, vacation, and weddings photos, or any image collection intended to be shared with others.

7. Technorati: Technorati is the leading monitor of the world of weblogs, currently monitoring more than 100 million “blogs.”

8. Del.icio.us: a social bookmarking service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks.

9. Digg: Everything on Digg, from news to videos to images, is submitted by members. Once submitted, other people see it and “Digg” what they like best. If your submission receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see.

10. StumbleUpon: an add-on to the Firefox browser, you select your areas of interest, click the “Stumble” button and it takes you to a random Web site that pertains to one of your interests.
 

Using SMM – a fictional, yet plausible, tale
You are the owner of a local restaurant known for its award-winning entrees and you want to use SMM to help promote your restaurant to attract new customers and increase sales on Monday nights, typically a slow night. You could release the secret recipe of one of the most popular entrees via a YouTube video and a blog on your restaurant’s Web site.
Next, go to other social networking food sites, post the recipe (along with links to the video and your Web site), and ask customers to rate the entree, which just happens to be served on Monday nights.
A likely outcome from this SMM strategy:
• Some of your existing customers try the recipe at home and want to compare it to the real thing on Monday night.
• Those existing customers will share this secret recipe with their friends who now become new potential customers of your restaurant.
• Your restaurant starts to develop more online relationships with customers and potential customers that have an “appetite” for more of your recipes. This group is also willing to provide feedback and suggestions for improving your “Monday Night Special.”
• A measurable improvement to your Monday night customer counts and increased retention of existing customers, all at minimal cost and effort.
Get started now!
SMM is a new way of thinking and communicating, and it requires management’s buy-in and support.
Engage your employees in your SMM efforts, develop your strategy, and start participating. Leveraging new and existing content across multiple forms of traditional and contemporary methods and media to new and existing customers could be that marketing edge your business has been looking for.

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