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In terms of specific days and times to post on Facebook, here are some of the stats I found: Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. I love the way this was explained in Buddy Media’s study: as they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”

Another study found that engagement was 32% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good rough guide to start experimenting with.

The best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.

“Posting pictures to Facebook only works well, if the pictures are self-explanatory.”

Pictures outperform everything. Our friends at KISSmetrics put it the best way, showing that this counts for likes, clicks, shares and comments alike:

if you have created a Twitter following that you can use to validate your blogpost headlines and ideas, I think this is one of the most powerful ways to make sure none of your precious time goes to waste. You can of course use that same technique for Facebook too, in case Twitter is not your forte.

100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 

a spike in retweets among those in the 71-100 character range—so-called “medium” length tweets. These medium tweets have enough characters for the original poster to say something of value and for the person retweeting to add commentary as well.

the ultra-short 40-character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than others.

The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55–64 year age bracket.

The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+.

Keep older users in mind when using social media, particularly on these three platforms. Our age makes a difference to our taste and interests, so if you’re focusing on younger users with the content you post, you could be missing an important demographic.

Among all the networks and specific centers in our brains, there are three that are known for being used in creative thinking. The Attentional Control Network helps us with laser focus on a particular task. It’s the one that we activate when we need to concentrate on complicated problems or pay attention to a task like reading or listening to a talk. The Imagination Network as you might have guessed, is used for things like imagining future scenarios and remembering things that happened in the past. This network helps us to construct mental images when we’re engaged in these activities. The Attentional Flexibility Network has the important role of monitoring what’s going on around us, as well as inside our brains, and switching between the Imagination Network and Attentional Control for us.

1. an idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements 2. the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships

Preparing your brain for the process of making new connections takes time and effort. We need to get into the habit of collecting information that’s all around us so our brains have something to work with.

In his classic article, "Small Wins," psychologist Karl Weick argued that people often become overwhelmed and discouraged when faced with massive and complex problems. He advocated recasting larger problems into smaller, tractable challenges that produce visible results, and maintained that the strategy of "small wins" can often generate more action and more complete solutions to major problems because it enables people to make slow, steady progress.

Ever wonder why people will so often write down an item they've already completed on their to-do list? It's so that they can have the satisfaction of immediately crossing it off and experiencing the sense of progress.

Stretch goals have a dangerous tendency to foster unethical behavior. In the early 1990s, Sears gave a sales quota of $147 per hour to its auto repair staff. Faced with this target, the staff overcharged for work and performed unnecessary repairs. Sears' Chairman at the time, Ed Brennan, acknowledged that the stretch goal gave employees a powerful incentive to deceive customers.

Authorship photos might cause people to assume that the page is an article or a blog post rather than a product page.

most pages can be optimized by including images that serve as visual cues for where visitors should look next.

Relying on the screen above “the fold” to do all of the heavy lifting is one of the biggest usability mistakes you can make. The idea that it is the only place web users will browse is a complete myth.

Posting pictures to Facebook only works well if the pictures are self-explanatory.

Use digits rather than words. “10 ways to…” works better than “Ten ways to….” This is often a common blogging mistake that can easily be avoided.

Being specific, while also showing that the article will be in depth, is one of the most important things to focus on.

The major takeaways from Google Panda and update (in no particular order) are as follows: Focus on original content – you will get hammered for “stealing” or repurposing on too high a scale (for example, lifting content from Wikipedia) Over-optimization kills – Google can sniff out sites that are designed solely to exploit certain key words (for example, repeating the same keyword, or variations thereof to drive traffic) Link to high quality/authoritative sites – while Panda focused more on a more systematic sweep of SEO, Penguin is focused on the processes around linking. Don’t over-link, and when you do create links, link to high quality sources Excessive Ads are Bad – If it looks like you are running too many ads against your content, you will face the consequences SEO is a “Bad Word” – The rise of the term “content marketing” effectively means that high quality content trumps low quality link bait.

Write Guest Blog Posts for Authoritative SitesContent marketing does not just refer to content you write for your own site, but content you write for other sites.

content marketing also improves SEO rankings and traffic.  Link building is a common SEO strategy that is always difficult to grow through a paid channel.  The best way to get organic and quality links is by creating interesting content that drives people to link and share your content.  Whether or not it’s directly related to your line of business, driving free traffic is always a victory.

Altimeter Group recently studied the internal goals in corporate social strategy. The top priority stated by 48% of companies was “Creating ROI Measurements”. Hypatia Research showed management’s expectations of the return on social communities are rather low. Research by Chief Marketer shows that the number of likes, friends & followers are the most used metrics by 60% of U.S. B2C and B2B marketers.

There exists great controversy about the use of ‘reach’ metrics.

Popular measures are the 3F’s (friends, fans & followers).

According to a new poll of U.S. marketers conducted by Gartner, corporate websites are ranked as the top digital activity for marketing “success” — beating marketing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media marketing, however, ranked as the next most important activity, equal in importance to online advertising.

The survey, conducted in November and December of 2012, polled a relatively small sample of 250+ marketers from U.S.-based companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue

Design, development and maintenance of the corporate website was cited by 45% of survey respondents as contributing to marketing success, with marketing on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cited by 43%. Digital/online advertising was also cited by 43%

Justin Pearse recently wrote a nice article on the state of digital content. He argues that content needs to be thoughtful, meaningful and well executed for it to be effective – it should be less about the brand, and more about the audience.

While his argument is absolutely correct, it pivots on the idea that engagement often begins and ends with a piece of content. The reality is that the failure of content marketing is in the belief that content exists in a vacuum.If you create a piece of content and don't support it, you're probably going to be disappointed. In other words, if we define experience as the beginning-to-end engagement with a brand, then content is simply part of the spectrum.

Digital content needs to be supported by great user experience (UX), solid digital strategy, attentive channel management and smart technology. To reiterate – it must be part of a system.

social buzz matters as much as previous season ratings and ad spend.

an 8.5 percent increase in Twitter volume among 18-34 year olds or a 14 percent increase among 35-49 year olds nets out a 1 percent increase in TV premiere ratings.

Connect to consumers in context. Having great content is not enough. Consider the context in which it will be consumed. Are your consumers looking for quick-hit information on their smartphones, snackable content on Facebook, or in-depth information on your website?  Create visible value. What topics can you credibly provide value on, through information, education, or entertainment? Don't just create it; make it clear where the value is provided. Continuously measure and optimize results. Go beyond tracking data to measuring impact. Tie results like brand lift, content shares, and unaided recognition of the content to metrics that run the business like leads or sales.

Tumblr blogs tend to lack the glossy, professional, high-minded design of other social networking sites, including the behemoth that is Facebook and the SMS-inspired Twitter. If anything, these teenaged Tumblrs harken back to earlier web days where users built their own pages on AngelFire and Geocities, with atrocious backgrounds, upgraded cursors, and dancing GIF images galore. GIFs, in fact, are so hugely popular on Tumblr that the company even began experimenting with GIF-based ads.

According to Pew Internet’s study from earlier this year, 13 percent of Internet users ages 18-29 use Tumblr, while only 5 percent of those 30-49 do, 3 percent of those 50-64

Demographic data from Quantcast further drives home just how youthful a site Tumblr has become. 21 percent of its audience is under 18, 30 percent is 18 to 24, and 22 percent is 25 to 34

Context is more than location. Context is derived from a wealth of signals pulled from environmental, social, emotional, cultural, and economic factors. The current SMS push messaging campaigns, where an offer fires based on a customer's location, is just the beginning. As marketers mature in handling context, they will come to know that Mrs. Smith isn't interested in the store nearest her home, where the area has poor lighting and bad parking, but the one you have in the mall 10 miles further out. Why? Because she can visit your shop, along with six others, in the stress-free mall; leave her infant in the crèche; and pick up her husband from work on the way back. 

Smartphones and wearables are the Trojan horse for bringing this new data to brands, with the new Samsung S4 smartphone having nine built-in sensors, and Google Glass a staggering 13. These devices bring more environmental and emotional real-time data about location, orientation, movement, temperature, humidity, light levels, and other golden cues to help remotely view a moment

two-thirds of consumers would unsubscribe from brands promotions if they thought the messages were too frequent — in the UK, 27% said they would stop using the product completely. It's clear that brands have to respond by understanding context in order to set the appropriate cadence of messaging.