Top 5 Inbound Marketing Articles of the Week: Social Media Attacks

No, I'm not talking about some kind of social media-wide conspiracy, I'm simply referring to the recent social media crisis Nestle has experienced on its Facebook page .

Our top inboud marketing article this week takes Greenpeace's recent Facebook attack on Nestle and Nestle's resulting communicative shortcomings as an opportunity to discuss recommendations for how to counter social media attacks on your company or brand. 

1. How to Salvage Your Brand on Facebook: Lessons for Nestle

Author: Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing Blog

If you haven't yet heard about the recent Nestle scandal, Jeremiah Owyang offers a nice little recap of the situation on his blog .  In Rohit's article, he takes note of Nestle's recent communications misstep, highlighting other examples of social media crises and the opportunity they afford the targeted companies to reinvent their social media efforts .

Rohit expands upon 5 tips he suggests for companies under attack: 1) apologize and change your tone, 2) use employees more than just HR, 3) share positive stories more transparently, 4) consolidate branded Facebook efforts, and 5) find and encourage more advocates. 

Marketing Takeaway: If you fall victim to negative reactions in social media, don't just sit back quietly -- react! 

2. 10 Steps to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

Author: Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog

Lee defines digital asset optimization (DAO) as "the practice of taking inventory of a company's marketable, digital assets and implementing a process for keyword optimization and promotion to relevant channels."  Different from search engine optimization (SEO), which focuses on the optimization of a company web site, Lee writes about the importance of DAO and highlights his 10-step digital asset optimized content marketing strategy.

Although the implementation of his strategy may not exactly be "easy," Lee notes that the good news about completing the steps to optimized content is the significant impact you can achieve in overall authority and the attraction of new business, coverage and employees.

Marketing Takeaway: Content optimization takes time and effort, but the results make it worthwhile.

3. Scaling Social Media

Author: Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com

Interested in getting involved with social media marketing but worried about how it will scale? Brogan's article helps businesses like yours get a sense of what will take time, how to budget for it, and how to consider engagement efforts.

Brogan starts off by summarizing the various methods of engaging in social media, and then addresses approaches to allocating these methods/tasks, which include listening/monitoring, customer service, client relations, social marketing, sales prospecting, and publishing.

Marketing Takeaway: Make social media involvement less daunting by first taking the time to prioritize your engagement.

4. How to Boost Search Engine Rankings Using Twitter

Author: Kelly Gillease on Search Engine Land

With the emergence of real-time search results, you may have started noticing the increased presence of tweets in search engine results pages, offering a valuable new opportunity for marketers.

Kelly's article discusses various techniques brands can use to increase their tweets' chances of popping up in search results.  Her first recommendation?  Make sure your company's Twitter handle matches its company name (e.g. HubSpot is @HubSpot on Twitter, which is a good thing).

Marketing Takeaway: The business and marketing benefits of Twitter are becoming increasingly prevalent. Is your company on Twitter yet?

5. 10 Fundamental Web Analytics Truths: Embrace ‘Em & Win Big

Author: Avinash Kaushik of Occam's Razor

Avinash's article starts off by addressing the fact that there are a lot of mistruths, fear, uncertainty and doubt out there about web analytics than he thinks makes sense.  He uses his article as a call-to-action to make a change as well as a chance to share his 10 web analytics ground truths. Although Avinash's article may be a bit lengthy, I'm telling you, it's worth reading...

Marketing Takeaway: There are a lot of myths regarding web analytics, so don't believe everything you hear.

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