THE LATEST advertising gimmick being utilized by SmartSheet.com Inc. is a one-minute video satire of a boardroom meeting.

The video depicts two presenters: SmartSheet and DumbSheet. SmartSheet sings a folk song to report the sales figures for the last quarter; DumbSheet does an interpretive dance-turned-striptease, but makes no mention of the sales figures. The board applauds SmartSheet, and DumbSheet is kicked out of the meeting. Moral: Be a SmartSheet.

"You can watch the video a hundred times and still have no idea what we do," says Maria Colacurcio, director of marketing for SmartSheet.com, a start-up company in Kirkland. "Our goal was to use the video to create buzz and build name recognition."

Since November, when the company posted the video on YouTube, a website that allows users to watch original videos online, SmartSheet.com's site has gotten thousands of hits.

"Generating buzz is one of the biggest challenges for a start-up," she adds. "We needed to be creative to get people interested in finding out who we are and what we do."

SmartSheet.com, which makes task management software that is much like Microsoft Excel but is used online, is one of a growing number of companies thinking outside the box when it comes to reaching their customers. Instead of sending out targeted mailings or focusing primarily on print advertising, companies have started blogs, launched MySpace pages and uploaded videos on YouTube to promote their products and services. These technologies, once thought of as the domain of teenagers, are becoming valuable business tools.

Consider this: Blogs, online journals that are updated on a regular basis, often use free software and can attract thousands of visitors; MySpace has over 47 million members and more than 8,000 user groups dedicated to business and entrepreneurship; and YouTube attracts 20 million visitors per month.

SPREADING SEEDS
"Tools like YouTube and MySpace allow companies to build a grassroots love for their products that starts with the users of these sites," says Fred Northup Jr., owner of Southdown Creative, a film and video production firm that specializes in developing comedic content for corporate clients. "Most of the people who are uploading videos to YouTube or setting up MySpace pages are under 30 or want to reach the under 30 market; these are great places to go after the Gen Y audience."

According to Northup, these high-tech tools are just a small part of a successful marketing campaign. In order to be effective, companies often upload YouTube videos or launch blogs in conjunction with other forms of advertising, like websites and print campaigns.

To increase its reach, SmartSheet.com posted the video on its website and sent it to bloggers that specialize in writing about new technologies. Their goal was to impress bloggers enough to have the video - and information about SmartSheet.com - included in multiple blogs. This process, called seeding, is one of the most effective methods for creating a marketing campaign that spreads quickly throughout online communities.

SmartSheet.com has been mentioned in several blogs, including www.technorati.com and www.digitalmedianet.com. The result: More traffic to their site and increased exposure to potential clients.

"The content is resonating with people," says Colacurcio. "We are getting excellent feedback and have gotten thousands of hits on our website and YouTube site in the past month."

MySpace is also viewed as a promising place to advertise and network for clients and business connections.

"We are using the social networking philosophy of MySpace to spread the gospel of Jobster," says Todd Leeson, vice president of marketing for Jobster, an Internet job search company. "Recruiting is all about relationships and social networking tools like MySpace allow us to build more relationships and ex-pandour networking capabilities."

Jobster has both a MySpace page and several blogs on its website. Leeson believes that blogs offer more insight into what Jobster is all about than a static website or press release. The ever-changing content also brings users back to the website on a regular basis which helps build name recognition. On Jan. 3, when Jobster laid off 60 of its 145 employees in a restructuring move (including Leeson), Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg wrote about it on his company blog.

"Blogs allow for direct dialogue, in real time, between Jobster and its users," Leeson explains. "The instantaneous connection between our bloggers and our visitors has allowed us to establish Jobster as one of the best online communities for job seekers which makes us more attractive to corporate clients."

Site visits have increased by more than 260 percent since Jobster launched its new site in October, and over 400 clients have signed on to use the site, increasing revenues by 482 percent.
 
D.L. Byron, owner of Textura Design, a Seattle-based consulting firm, saw an emerging market for helping companies develop blogs to connect companies to their customers. In 2005 he began creating blogs for Boeing and now also has Intel, and Genentech Inc. as customers. The goal was to help break down some of the stereotypes surrounding big businesses.

"There is a perception that Fortune 500 companies care more about profits than their customers," says Byron, the author of Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business. "A lot of big businesses want to change that perception. Using a blog to create a dialogue with customers lets them know that companies like Intel and Boeing do care about their customers and want their feedback."

Byron argues that all businesses should develop their own blogs. "Businesses are being talked about in the blogosphere whether or not they have their own blogs," he says. "Setting up an official blog can help companies connect with their customers and provide accurate information about their business."
 
According to Byron, one of the reasons Boeing set up a blog was to respond to bad press. "The blog helps them communicate with the public in a way that a press release or a commercial never could."

Marketing on social networking sites isn't necessarily effective. Critics say Boeing's blog is not particularly interesting and therefore not widely read.

Diageo PLC's Smirnoff created a two-minute video last summer to promote its malted iced tea. The video was seen on YouTube by more than 2 million people, but marketing experts say it did little to improve the iced tea's market share.

"The video was funny and clever, but it was unclear who it was targeting," says Melinda Partin, CEO of Worktank, a Seattle-based marketing company. "There was no connection between the kind of people who watched the video and the kind of people who would go out and buy the tea."

Experts also warn that high-tech marketing tools will not work unless they are part of a broader marketing campaign. "Companies are using these tools to be ahead of the curve, but it is important to use them in conjunction with other components of a marketing campaign," says Northup. "The most successful viral marketing campaigns use e-mails, banner ads and even print collateral as well as blogs, MySpace and YouTube."

FEED YOUR BLOGS
Colacurcio agrees. "The people who are watching videos on YouTube or checking out MySpace pages are not necessarily the people who will be buying our product," she says. "YouTube is a way to create buzz, but it is just one part of our marketing plan; we are using other strategies that appeal directly to our target customers."

In addition to integrating high-tech tools into a comprehensive marketing campaign, businesses have to be willing to do the work to use them effectively.

Although most blogging software is free and both MySpace and YouTube do not charge to upload content, these marketing tools can still be expensive.

Textura Design charges a consulting fee to companies wanting advice setting up their own blogs, and Southdown Creative charges between $25,000 and $100,000 to produce a three-minute video that can be uploaded to YouTube.

A growing number of businesses believe that the potential to reach the target audience is worth the investment. Northup developed a video for Microsoft Flight Simulator X, a computer game. It has gotten almost 60,000 views since it was uploaded to YouTube in October.

"I think the success is due, in large part, to the fact that the video resonates with the target audience and uses humor to highlight a new feature of the game," Northup explains. "Gamers are already watching YouTube and it is the gamers who are posting the video and sending it to their gamer friends, so the buzz grows."

Staff also has to devote billable hours to updating blogs and keeping the content on MySpace and YouTube fresh. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes businesses make when using these marketing tools is failing to keep them up-to-date.

"Blogs require care and feeding," says Byron. "Businesses need to be adding new posts, monitoring comments and responding to them in order to keep the dialogue open. If that component is overlooked, the blog will wither and die."

In the end, most businesses have found the effort and the price tag to be worthwhile. "Marketing tools like YouTube have tremendous potential," says Colacurcio. "In the last month, we have gotten several e-mails from people who have seen our videos and written to let us know they are never going to forget the name SmartSheet.com."

Jodi Helmer is a freelance writer based in Portland.