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• The most retweeted tweets occur between 2-5pm Eastern Time, Thursday & Friday.
• Twitter links click-through-rate (CTR) dips on Mondays & Thursdays; all other days are strong.
• Twitter CTRs are strongest 10am & 5pm ET.
• Twitter CTRs don’t decline at night.
• Don’t be afraid to tweet more for maximum effectiveness.
• Post updates to Facebook pages every-other day.
• Weekends are best for Facebook sharing of links for both B2C & B2B.
• Articles published in the morning are shared on Facebook slightly more often than those published in the afternoon.
• Most people check their email in morning (but percentages are still very high into the evening and night).
• Email open rates tend to be higher on weekends and early in the mornings.
• Emails get more attention on weekends.
• Emailing frequently doesn’t diminish CTRs as long as the content is valuable and relevant to the subscriber.
• Frequent emailing of quality content does not increase unsub rates.
• The newest subscribers to your email list are your best.
• Most people read blogs in the morning and afternoon. More men read blogs in the evening and night than women.
• Monday is the day for heavy blog reading; Tuesday dips; Wednesday through Friday are equal; dipping again on the weekend.
• Blog posts at 10-11am ET tend to get more views.
• Blog comments spike on weekends.
• Blog early in the morning to get more links by the linkeratti.
• Blog more frequently; even multiple times per day.

See the SlideShare slides.

See the recorded webinar.

On his blog Innovation in Mission, Jon Hirst (@generousmind), draws lessons for marketers from the missing snake story at the Bronx Zoo. An Egyptian Cobra escaped from the New York zoo on Monday and “someone, realizing the opportunity for humor and attention, set up a Twitter account called @bronxzooscobra,” which now has more than 124,000 followers enjoying such tweets as “Getting my morning coffee at the Mudtruck. Don't even talk to me until I've had my morning coffee. Seriously, don't. I'm venomous.” And “On top of the Empire State Building! All the people look like little mice down there. Delicious little mice.”

Jon suggests the following components comprise effective communication principles marketers should use in their campaigns to engage people:

1. A Real Event
2. Authenticity
3. Quality Content

Read this in full.

What other principles can we learn from the snake tweet’s follower success?

The company that brought us everything-but-the-kitchen-sink pocket knives has come up with a campaign to “promote the core values that have contributed to our 127 years of success and fame.” Called Time to Care, it’s Victorinox's (@Victorinox) yearlong initiative celebrating “The Spirit of Innovation and Sustainability.”

Running from late March through the end of September 2011, the Time to Care project showcases the innovative Victorinox Swiss Army Alliance line of watches and chronographs. It consists of two initiatives: a traveling photography exhibition celebrating sustainable design and an international sustainable design competition. The events seek to promote and generate innovative and design solutions.

What ways can you think of to promote your brand’s commitment to innovation?

Jack Hird (@Jake_Hird), senior research analyst for Econsultancy, offers the following social media stats:

• Twitter has 175 million registered users; 95 million tweets per day; 4 million tweets per hour.
• LinkedIn registrants number more than 100 million
• Facebook population officially is more than a half-billion, but some unofficial counting has it at 640 million. At least 250 million users log in every 24 hours; 200 million access it through mobile devices. The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
• Flickr hosts more than 5 billion images; 3,000 images uploaded every minute.
• Wikipedia now has more than 17 million articles and 91,000 active contributors.
• YouTube video views number more than two billion every 24 hours; more than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

Read this article in full.

Graham Charlton (@gcharlton) has assembled statistics about the mobile Internet:

• People use mobile search at home in the evening (81%) than any other time or places more frequently than anywhere else (81%), followed by at home on weekends (80%).
• 66% use mobile search while while watching TV, something which should get advertisers thinking, while 61% said they use it at work.
• 75% said mobile search makes their lives easier, 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information, and 32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers.
• 84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers, such as opening hours, address and contact details. 82% look for online retailers, 73% find a specific product or manufacturer website.
• Tying in with the crossover in TV viewing and mobile search, 71% learn more about a product or service having seen an ad, 68% use it to find the best price for a product.

Read this article in full.

Also see Social Media Today’s “Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2010 (So Far)” by Tom Pick (@TomPick).

Let Somersault help you create an integrated social media marketing strategy. And be sure to use daily our SomersaultNOW dashboard to remain current with the latest developments in social media marketing and digital publishing.

Ron Benrey (@ronbenrey), posting on the blog Fiction After 50, lays out a rational approach to the art of pricing ebooks.

At first, we couldn’t understand why someone willing to spend $18 for two movie tickets would recoil at spending 10 bucks on an ebook. After all, a movie is a one-time event, whereas an ebook can be read again and again (and, with some ereaders, lent to other people).

We then we thought some more...

1. We paid for our ebook readers (which makes an ebook more like renting a DVD than going to a first-run movie).

2. Even more important, we know that ebooks (unlike movies, library books, or paper-back books) are cheap to produce. We think it’s unfair for a publisher to charge the same price for an ebook as for a paper book.

All at once, the penny dropped (as the Brits say). We began to understand why customers might perceive three to four bucks as a fair price for an ebook. They are doing an instinctive cost analysis and realizing that an ebook selling at $2.99 and a trade paper book selling for $14.99 can net a publisher the same profits. (This is eerily close to the truth when you consider the cost of printing, transportation, distribution, warehousing, and returns.)

Simply put ... there’s no reason for a publisher to charge 15, 20, even 25 dollars for an ebook — other than a seriously overdeveloped profit motive.

Read the full post.

Do you agree with him?

You’ll also want to read his post “eBook ‘Tipping Points’”

This article in Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) highlights the online tools that are enabling publishers to spread the word about their books to more targeted audiences — sometimes, at a much lower cost — than traditional marketing methods.

Simon & Schuster recently launched a brand-new way to connect with its customers through Foursquare, the popular, location-based mobile social networking community.

Users who follow Simon & Schuster Foursquare receive information and tips culled from Simon & Schuster books and authors when they "check-in" at certain locations, be it their favorite diner in London, a resort in Arizona, or the Pyramids in Egypt. For example, they'll receive facts about historic landmarks, a dish their favorite chef enjoys at a restaurant, or a tidbit such as 21 elephants walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884, proving its stability.

Read this article in full.

Somersault has identified more than 500 online services to leverage for successful social media marketing. Let us know how we can help you. And be sure to daily use our free SomersaultNOW dashboard, created especially for publishing and marketing professionals.

“Attention for Love Wins began in late February when the book trailer stirred debate on Twitter. Many bloggers responded to Rob Bell's claims about Heaven and Hell with outcries of universalism and heresy, propelling Bell into the top 10 trending topics on Twitter, and prompting HarperOne to advance the book's release by two weeks.”

Is this another example of how the right kind of controversy can sell books – at least in general market bookstores? Controversy hasn't been a reliable sales booster in CBA – outside of a few books like The Shack, and in that case perhaps it wasn’t so much controversy as the enthusiastic personal word-of-mouth conversation that sold the book.

It'll be interesting to see whether controversy helps sell Love Wins in CBA and if stores will stock it if enough people come in requesting it. Another question to ponder: do people shop in CBA bookstores to buy books they expect to disagree with? Or do most consumers go into a CBA bookstore to buy books that affirm their beliefs?

What are your thoughts on this from a bookselling perspective?

In short, this data shows that: (1) consumers are interested in interacting with advertising that bears a QR code – thus, the promise of additional benefits in the form of deals, coupons, videos, sweepstakes, social media interactions, etc.; and (2) QR codes can help an ad break through the clutter by increasing the chance it will be remembered, great news for advertisers who have already integrated a QR code strategy into a traditional advertising campaign or are looking to insert them in a future campaign.

View the full survey results in pdf form.

How should you be using QR codes in your marketing communications mix?

Update: The above research is interesting, especially in light of the article QR Codes May Be Going Away. 

CNN reports on the National Geographic special series "7 Billion" that, among the entire population of the world, the average person is a 28-year-old Han Chinese male. And the most common person in the world is right handed, has an annual income under $12,000, and owns a cellphone, but does not have a bank account. What are the implications of this study in the world of publishing?

Thomas Nelson Chairman & CEO Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt) has included on his blog video interviews conducted at Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld). Michael was interviewed on his perspective on social media, bundling, sharing, and the success of Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze.com program. Other publishing executives interviewed were

• Jane Friedman, Founder and CEO of Open Road Integrated Media (former CEO of HarperCollins)
• Sarah Weinman, News Editor of Publishers Marketplace
• Deborah Forte, president of Scholastic Media
• Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks
• James McQuivey, VP and Principal Analyst of Forrester Research

See these interviews in full.