A weekly briefing of noteworthy inbound marketing links that you may have missed, but can't afford not to:
Why social media matters, Reason No. 1,421: If you still don't "get" the whole social media thing, you probably think people believe everything they read in your press releases. But, the plain truth is, as Patricio Robles points out on the eConsultancy blog, "Consumers don't trust advertising, is social media part of the solution?"
Searching for results: In a guest column on TalentZoo, media planner Jeff Louis goes on a quest for studies that prove the bottom-line value of social media marketing. Find out what he discovered in "Proof Positive: Social Media Increases Sales." (A word of warning: The post is a little long-ish and busy readers may want to scroll down a couple screens for the real takeaway information.)
Coincidentally, Ryan Deutsch also wrote about "How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance" this week on Social Media Examiner.
Owyang, Part I: Jeremiah Owyang asks "Is your company really ready to interact with customers - and critics - online?" Writing on Forbes.com about Nestle's Facebook debacle, Owyang offers a must-read checklist to help marketers prepare for social media interactions.
Owyang, Part II: Sure, we like to share the link love in this roundup, but Jeremiah Owyang has another must-read post this week, this one on his own blog. While most of the media buzz about Facebook's recent changes revolves around privacy issues, Owyang points out that the new "community pages" also have serious implications for brands.
Facebook marketing, done right: We've all come across them. Lousy corporate pages on Facebook full of links to press releases and not much else. So who's getting is right? Daily SEO Tips has put together "A Roundup of 20 Effectively Branded Facebook Pages."
Read all about it: Joe Pulizzi gives his (engaging) take on "The Social Media Publishing Model for Publishers" on his Junta 42 blog. Since, as the saying goes, everyone is a publisher - or should be - nowadays, these ideas are applicable to any organization's social media strategy.
Quote of the week: "While Google and search engines present a tremendous opportunity to attract new business, support existing customers, attract new employees and media coverage plus a host of other search outcomes, it's important to diversify online marketing in a way that also benefits overall search marketing." - Lee Odden, in his article, "Beyond Google: SEO and the Social Web," on the Top Rank Online Marketing Blog
Have you found (or created) anything that can help others succeed? Share it with us by posting a comment and a link.