I like the HubSpot blog. I really do. There’s a wealth of great information on their site.

But I hate posts like this: Create a Facebook Business Page and Tap 53 Million Users (For Free!).

The implication is that all you need to do is create the page and people will be lined up at your door like turkey-hungover masses breaking down the glass doors at Wal-Mart to buy a two-dollar toaster.

It’s not the case, and it never will be. You might as well say: “Open a hot dog stand in Manhattan and tap into 8 million hungry New York City residents!”

Uhhhhhh … what about the competition? The maintenance? The marketing plan? You get the idea.

A Facebook business page is a tool. It’s a pretty good tool, in many cases, but it’s no silver bullet solution to anything, and it’s not an end by any means. It’s simply one of many, many tools at the online marketer’s disposal. Whether or not it’s an appropriate tool depends on your company’s overall marketing communications strategy.

Please, people, let’s lighten up on the hype, okay?

Takeaway for marketers: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Duh.

The post on the 1918 blog begins:

“Today my wife received a certified letter from Casey Movers asking her to remove a negative Yelp review or they would sue for libel in District Court in Massachusetts.”

It gets better from there.

This is a fascinating case study that everyone who is involved in social media marketing and communications on any level whatsoever needs to read.

(Hat tip to Chris Abraham at Reputation.com for the heads up on this one.)

Takeaway for marketers: Read it and learn.

Social Media Explorer explains why.

I probably receive many of the same sorts of pitches that Mark Smiciklas writes about in his post. Here’s the thing, though: Engaging in pure one-one-one outreach is not always cost-effective, even for the most knowledgeable and experienced marketers. On the other hand, engaging in sweeping one-email-size-fits-all outreach to a large mailing list can, as Mark correctly notes, erode business value.

The question is this: How does any given company find a cost-effective happy medium?

I wish I had an easy answer. I do believe that the answer begins, as so many marketing answers do, with “it depends.”

It depends on the nature of the business, the nature of the outreach, the nature of the audience, the nature of the communication goal — in brief, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to avoiding a one-size-fits-all solution when customizing outreach for each of 1,000 (or even 100) recipients is damn near impossible.

Is that time-consuming one-on-one outreach “the only real effective way to nurture relationships that can add business value over time” as Mark writes? Probably. But that won’t stop companies of all sizes from trying to cut corners.

Takeaway for marketers: When you’re cutting those corners, and you will, do so with a scalpel, not a hatchet. That way, you at least have a shot at learning something and minimizing any damage you might inflict.

Woke up this morning to see this tweet from @J_M_McDermott, author of the Inc. article I linked to on Saturday.

“@LOHADdotcom is a shameless self-promoter who did no original reporting and wrote an ‘article’ based on nothing but anecdotal evidence. FYI.”

Well, good morning to you, too, John.

I was tempted to tweet back an equally abrasive personal attack, but I’m really not into flame wars (unless it’s with political extremists, then they can be all kinds of fun, especially in a red-hot election season), though I can’t help but wonder why he had such a visceral reaction to a pretty conventional random observation.

Takeaway for marketers: It’s usually a good thing when you link to articles to let the authors know you’ve done so. Occasionally, though, you’ll be reminded of the the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished.” Don’t sweat it. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, so don’t bother trying.

Over on Social Media Today, Jon-Mikel Bailey makes a lot of sense. For all the smoke and mirrors and promises and dreams and statistics and analyses and … well, look: It boils down to knowing your customer and having a communications strategy.

Takeaway for marketers: Duh.