Social Consumers and the Science of Sharing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Mike Geraci · Intriguing results from a brand marketing attitude... How to Time Your Facebook Posts to Reach the Most Fans Jeff Widman co-founded PageLever to provide better Facebook analytics for marketers. PageLever measures more than 650 million Facebook fans across customers like YouTube and MTV. Jeff has been cited as an expert in Facebook analytics by Mashable, AdAge, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, InsideFacebook, AllFacebook, etc. I get asked all the time, "How frequently should I post on my Facebook page? When is the best time to post?" Answer: Post whenever the most recent status update for your page stops showing up in your fans' News Feeds. If you post often, you will see an immediate spike in News Feed impressions, but it's generally not worth the cost in lost fans. If you post too infrequently, you're missing out on opportunities to reach your fans. The kicker: Each post performs differently. Calculate the average post lifetime by using the method below, but remember it's just that — an average. How do you know when a post stops appearing in your fans' News Feeds? 1. 2. 3. Post a status update.

6 Best Practices for Media Companies on Facebook Now a top-five referrer to the websites of many a publisher, as well as a valuable feedback tool, Facebook has become an essential part of the content and audience development strategies of most media organizations. To capitalize on the potential of Facebook and other user-heavy social networks, publishers have hired community managers and digital strategists to optimize traffic and engagement on those platforms. Editors, reporters and producers are likewise tapping into Facebook, using reactions from fans to improve their storytelling methods. We spoke with several talented people fulfilling these roles at major media organizations, and we've gathered their thoughts below. 1. Choose the Right Content Publishers have found that certain kinds of content perform better than others on Facebook, particularly content that inspires emotional connections with readers. 2. "Posing questions is a good way to stir debate," says Ed O'Keefe, executive producer of ABCNews.com. 3. 4. NPR's Carvin agrees.

Social Media Engagement in China: Top 20 Luxury Brands | Penn-Olson A new annual report from the L2ThinkTank has been released today, giving insights into which big-name luxury brands are best engaging with Chinese consumers in 2011. The researchers dub it a “China IQ” – a measure of a company’s effectiveness on the web and social media among China’s growing middle-classes. The report’s authors stress that “success in the world’s fastest-growing prestige market is inextricably linked to digital competence.” They’ve identified a list of top 100 companies in this regard, but we’ll boil it down to 20 top web and social media engagers. Before we identify those brands, how big is the luxury market in China? Looking at the above graph, we see a realistic, “addressable” market amongst the world’s populace who have an income of over US$30,000. Top 20 “China IQ” List For 2011 And the winner is… Audi. Second is Burberry, the British fashion label that we’ve seen working with check-in service Jiepang, and launching a new brand channel on Youku. Going Up, Going Down…

HOW TO: Improve Engagement on Your Brand's Facebook Page [STATS] If you're looking to boost engagement on your brand's Facebook Page, a new report from Buddy Media has some key findings for you. The social media marketing company collected data from 200 of its clients' Pages* over a 14-day period and found that time is an important factor in determining the success of a Facebook post. The study reveals that more often than not, a Facebook post is ill-timed — in fact, office hours could be the worst time to blast content. "While marketers may work Monday through Friday, Facebook is humming with activity 24-hours a day, seven days a week,” says Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow. Here are the findings, along with tips about when and how to make the most of a Facebook post. Be Timely The study found that daily Facebook engagement has three peaks: early morning (7 a.m. Good timing on Facebook depends on the day of the week, too. Entertainment: Friday, Saturday and Sunday are huge, as that is when people are most inclined to see a movie or go to a concert.

H&M Under Fire for Using Fake, Computer-Generated Models Recently, Swedish fashion chain H&M came forth and admitted to using computer-generated models to showcase a range of collections on its website. The virtual models look completely human, but if you look closely, they all have the same body shape and pose. The real model’s head has been superimposed on the body and the skin tone has been digitally altered to match her complexion. It was Swedish website Aftonbladet that first noticed the uncanny similarities of the models. Hacan Andersson, a spokesman from H&M, confirmed this by saying: It’s not a real body, it is completely virtual and made by the computer. This method has created some controversy among netizens who have criticized H&M for creating a false reality for its customers and creating an unrealistic body image for women to live up to. Andersson argued that the choice was made because it simplified the process of the photoshoot and also that customers can focus on the clothes rather than the models.

HOW TO: Start Marketing on Facebook The Social Media 101 Series is supported by Global Strategic Management Institute. GSMI's Social Media Strategies Series are the leading educational events for organizations looking to advance their online capabilities. Learn more. It's no secret: U.S. consumers continue to spend increasing amounts of time on Facebook. Facebook's proposition is especially attractive to small business owners, and not just because it enables them to hone in on potential customers through highly targeted, paid advertisements. "Ask [small business owners] how they get customers, and they'll tell you that someone walks in, has a great experience, walks out and tells a couple of their friends," says Emily White, senior director of local at Facebook. With these ideas in mind, we've compiled this six-step guide for getting started on Facebook. 1. It's also a good time to post your first status update welcoming fans to your Page. 2. 3. 4. "This will increase your conversions significantly," Lazerow says. 5. 6.

Even on $15,000 a Year, Most Young People Buy Smartphones [STUDY] When a twentysomething's budget is tight, her smartphone is far from the first expense to go, suggests a new study from Nielsen. The survey of 20,000 U.S. mobile customers found that smartphone ownership skews toward the young and the wealthy — exactly as you'd expect. What is more surprising, however, is this nugget: smartphone penetration among young people in the lowest income bracket is higher than it is among older people in the wealthiest bracket. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, more than half of respondents who make less than $15,000 each year said they own a smartphone. Making less than $15,000 in a year doesn't stop 43% of these 25- to 34-year-old mobile customers from paying for a smartphone. Meanwhile, fewer than 20% of respondents older than 45 who make less than $15,000 said they owned a smartphone.

4 Rules of Engagement for Mobile Marketing Carla Paschke is Director of Mobile Innovation at Engauge where she is responsible for providing best-in-class mobile strategies for clients, including Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A. Follow her on Twitter @carlapaschke. Smartphones, the most powerful data-collection tools ever created, don’t just tell brands what consumers want but where consumers are. Location, activity and time are a powerful combination, however, many companies, in a rush to seize a toehold in the exploding mobile market, mistakenly focus on the technology instead of the people using it. Their messages lack relevancy and consumers filter them out the mobile equivalent of telemarketing. Consumers no longer passively participate in campaigns. Brands have to motivate people to act by designing campaigns as dynamic and flexible as the mobile market, which now includes search, social, video, music, gaming, payments, retail transactions, location-based services and augmented reality. 1. This dynamic isn’t going to change. 2. 3.

[STUDY] How Americans Feel About Personalized Search & Targeted Ads A new report out today from the fabulous folks at Pew reveals something that you, Internet user, probably already know. Most Americans are "anxious" about the personal information that search engines and websites collect from them, according to the study. The majority of 'Net users disapprove: 65% say that search engines collecting information is a bad thing because it narrows the type of information you'll get online, effectively creating a Filter Bubble type effect. Conversely, only 29% think search engines collecting information to shape future search results is a good thing because it tailors searches to you. In the age of oversharing on the Internet, Google's newest privacy policies and Facebook Timeline of your life, is it right to collect and use personal data? Google's new privacy policy is essentially a single privacy policy, working toward one unified product. What else did Pew discover? On the whole, search engine users were quite pleased with search tools.

Who Are The 10 Most Social Media Networked Companies on The Planet? Playing in the school yard when you were five or six quite often involved comparing how many friends you had which was helpful in calculating how much influence you had and how important you were in the schoolyard pecking order. Forward 20, 30 or 40 years and now in 2010 you can quantify your influence and attention through social media metrics. Netprospex have taken it a step further and have quantified the top 50 companies that have the most connected employees. So if you are curious to find who is the most connected company on the planet then here are a few numbers that provide interesting reading. NetProspex titled their findings the NPSI Score or “NetProspex Social Index” to score social network activity . The score is based on the average number of Friends or connections across major social networks (friendliness) Average number of tweets, Number of users following Number of followers per employee (twitter score). The numbers were taken from across 9 major networks Rank 4: Walt Disney 181

50 Free Social Media Tools You Can't Live Without A couple years ago, Jay Baer wrote a great blog post called ‘The 39 social media tools I’ll use today’ which was an all-in-one toolkit for social media marketers (and still is). A lot has changed in the two years since that post was published so here is a ’2012 remix’ featuring 50 (mostly free) tools you can use on a daily basis. Whether you are just starting out in the social media arena or have been at it for a few years, this will hopefully be a handy resource. So, let’s serve ‘em up! Listening / Research The foundations for any social media marketing activity start with listening and in-depth research, ranging from influencer identification to campaign planning. General listening tools Best in class: SocialMention.com – As far as ‘free’ options go, this is a solid as it gets.Alternatives: BoardReader.com (discussion board specific), Addictomatic.com (a general listening dashboard) and PeopleBrowsr.com (big data, big insights). Specific listening tools General research tools Engagement

The 21 Greatest SEO Myths of the Modern World Sep 22 2011 They say that ignorance is bliss and knowledge is power but somewhere between these clichés there’s a spot reserved for individuals who possess a little too much knowledge to be blissful but still only enough knowledge to be dangerous. SEO, as an industry, is known unfortunately for the mass of rumours, myths, mistruths and unscrupulous gurus. The aim of this post is to try and dispel some of the more widely held SEO myths: #1 – Google is the Only Search Engine Google may be the largest search engine but you shouldn’t ignore the others. It sounds ridiculous to say and whilst Google is the biggest of the search engines, Bing has certainly cornered a fair percentage of the market – some say as high as 30% of all US searches are powered by Bing. Many of the techniques and principles are the same across the search engines but you should also do things like register your website over at Bing’s Webmaster Center Tools. #2 – You Need to Submit Your Website to Google Less important, yes.

20+ Mind-blowing social media statistics: One year later It's been more than twelve months since I rounded up some of the more impressive social media stats and pieces of data. But what's happened since then? Clearly, social media is big, it's still getting bigger, and as a broad digital channel, is not going to disappear anytime soon. While the value of this type of statisitical information can be questioned, especially when considering the place of social media within a business structure, I think it serves to highlight simply how massive the channel is as a whole. I think it also indicates the rapid growth seen amongst certain platforms, which in the physical world would generally never happen. Then: Twitter has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. Now: Twitter now officially claims to have 175m registered users, although it's unclear what percentage regularly user the service. Then: LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. Then: Facebook has 350 million active users on global basis. Now: Go Europe!