At the core of successful Social Media Marketing must-haves is the ability to develop, leverage and distribute meaningful content. In Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett’s book Get Content: Get Customers (highly recommended), they define content marketing as “…the art of understanding exactly what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way… Once you’ve delivered relevant content, you become a trusted resource.” To effectively leverage content via SMM, or any other form of media for that matter, you need to act as a magazine publisher and/or public relations person would — carefully planning, crafting, timing and then delivering your content to your target audience. This, of course, is based on your understanding of how your customers respond and how you want them to respond, to some degree.

For example, assume a local restaurant owner, (Stu Bouillion) known for his award winning soups, wants to take advantage of SMM as part of his integrated marketing mix. Stu’s objectives are to acquire new customers and increase sales on Tuesday nights which are usually slow. He might choose to release a secret recipe of one of his most popular soups via video on YouTube and a blog on the restaurant’s website in a non-promotional format (Note: Social networks can see right through promotions). In addition, Stu will go on to other social networking food sites, posting the content and asking customers to rate his soup recipe (and content), which, by the way, is served on Tuesdays at the restaurant. The potential outcome could most likely include:

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