1. What is the best time to post? Weekends and off-peak hours. Saturdays and Sundays were the best days for interaction, while Thursdays had the lowest interaction rates. The best time of day to post was during 6:00pm-5:00am.

2. How many times should I post per day? As many times as you want. Study shows that with each post made throughout the day, interaction rate drops for each subsequent post. However, Facebook EdgeRank highly weights recency in posts, so if an admin doesn’t post frequently their fans may never see their posts.

3. What type of content elicits the most interaction? Photos by far have the highest interaction rate, which is 200% higher than the lowest, links. Photos are followed by status messages. Links are the most frequently posted content but have the lowest interaction rate.

4. Should I ask fans to Like and Comment on my posts? Yes! Asking to Like increases interaction by 216%. So for Facebook page admins, using call-to-action is definitely an effective way significantly boost your interaction rate.

5. Should I ask my fans questions? Questions don’t increase interaction rate, but they do increase commenting rate. Make sure to ask fans to answer your questions with a comment. But, asking questions also helps.

6. How long should my status messages be? Posts from about 40 to 140 characters are most common, but lengthy Facebook status updates show higher interaction rates than shorter ones. Don’t be afraid to share longer stories with your fans.

7. How long do my posts last in the Newsfeed? 50% of clicks happen within 1 hour, 90% happen within 9 hours.

The whole study is published online and downloadable as a PDF. Were any of the results surprising? Please share any additional tips you might have!

Guest were invited from various groups related to social media:

• FridayBeersYYC Meetup – #FridayBeersYYC
• Calgary Professional Business Owners & Managers Meetup
• Third Tuesday Calgary Meetup – #TTYYC
• Quickinars – #Quickinars

If you attended the event, please Like the Facebook page of the restaurant: http://www.facebook.com/LaBrezzaRistorante

If you would like to make a reservation please use OpenTable.

Below are video shots of some of those that attended.

Variety of people at La Brezza

Toni, Trayah, Marie-Eve, Pat, Hanif and Shamsu

Hamish and Doug

Wait staff: Ali, Amber and Greg

Lyn Cadence and Brian

Moca Joe and Toni

Alma and Marco Abdi (La Brezza owner)

Greg, Matt, Yves, and Hamish

Trayah and Marie-Eve

Amber and Greg, again

Doug wrote and excellent summary of the session in his regular column with The Star Phoenix.

A quick quote in Doug’s own voice, “This week I had the privilege of helping put on a social media seminar for First Nations communicators. Representatives from the Siksika Nation and the Piikani Nation, both in Alberta, were in attendance at our Social Media Strategy for First Nations “Quickinar.” Jeff Nelson, my partner in producing Quickinars, and I received much help in producing this seminar from Wayne Courchene, a social media success story in his own right.”

Doug also mentioned our collaborator, Wayne Courchene. We would not have been able to host this event without Wayne’s effort, guidence and connections. We are grateful. Wayne writes a blog of his own at: Iskote.

In Doug’s article he quotes some of the case studies that we reviewed including:

• AFN Chief Shawn Atleo and his blog at nationalchief.blogspot.com
• Excellent videos by various students encouraging others to vote: http://firstnationhelp.com/
• The Alberta Saskatchewan First Nations Metis Nations page on Facebook with over 14,000 Likes
• Two tourism sites developed around First Nations culture: Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan and Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump in Alberta (great video on this site)
• A Facebook page created by Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute
• Self-described Urban Native Girl Lisa Charleyboy has a fabulous blog that was “born out of a love for writing, fashion, film, beauty, pop culture and all things Indigenous.” Lisacharleyboy.com

But don’t let me steal Doug’s thunder, have a look at the article which was also published on Social Media Today.

As mentioned in a previous post, Article: Liberal leadership social media monitor: No runaway successes, Gillian is following the Liberal leadership race in BC. The BC Liberals will choose new leader on February 26th.

The main question of the article is wondering if the use of social media will have an impact on the various candidate’s campaigns.

I’m not involved in politics very much but something tells me that the situation in BC is different. On one hand Naheed Nenshi was aiming for the mayor’s chair in a race open and visible to the general public.  What he needed was lots of people voting for him and one way to do that is create buzz and chatter on social networks. For him it worked well.

In contrast, the audience (voters) of the BC Liberal leadership race is restricted to party members. This is a finite audience, who may not want the debate to be open to the public arena. As a result, one might question the value of using social media as a communication channel to engage and influence voters.

There may be another way, however, to use social media to help move the goal posts (my compliments to Reuters for the photo). In addition to courting existing Liberal party members, a leadership candidate could set an objective to increase new memberships with the implicit understanding that these new members would vote for them. According to my local contacts this is in fact the strategy used by Alberta Liberal leader, David Swann who won leadership in December 2008.

If recruiting new members is one of the objectives then I would say using social network may work, quite well in fact. With this in mind, the channels may include:

• A website that encourages sharing on social media channels
• An email sign-up option with regular updates sent by email
• A YouTube channel with videos on the candidate’s background and policies
• A Facebook page that has a inviting Welcome tab and a call to action
• A campaign on Twitter to reach out to those who are active on Twitter and interested in the Liberal party
• A blog with regular updates on topics that are relevant to potential new members
• A discussion on LinkedIn on the leadership race (this assumes that the candidate has over 500 local connections; otherwise there aren’t enough people to hold a discussion)
• Potentially, an iPhone app that gives regular updates to those who are interested

In other words, if a leadership candidate is serious then they should open up the avenues to share, communicate, discuss, debate and interact. If the objective is to increase membership sales, then using social media will help!

That’s my 2 cents worth. Thanks Gillian for the quote.

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.

Evvi-Lynn is a student at Mount Royal University in the Journalism Program.

I especially like the video that she found that goes along with the article. Enjoy.

Great article, Evvi-Lynn. Thanks for contacting us.

In a recent issue the title of the article is, “The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday” – December 2010. The sub-title is, “McKinsey’s new survey research finds that companies using the Web intensively gain greater market share and higher margins.” For a look at the full report, see the 9 page PDF.

Here are some additional quotes by the authors, Jacques Bughin, director in McKinsey’s Brussels office and Michael Chui, based in the San Francisco office, a senior fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute:

• New McKinsey research shows that a payday could be arriving faster than expected.
• Our data show that fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.
• In applying Web 2.0 technologies, fully networked enterprises seem to have moved much further along the learning curve than other organizations have.
• Overall, we found that respondents at 27 percent of the companies in our survey reported
  having both market share gains against their competitors and higher profit margins.
• Integrate the use of Web 2.0 into employees’ day-to-day work activities. This practice is the key success factor in all of our analyses, as well as other research we have done.

Excellent article. Well worth the time and effort to read.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

Today I thought I would highlight some other websites that are interesting and use video in a different way.

The first is KhanAcademy. See www.khanacademy.org. If you are struggling with math concepts like ratios or statistics – go to this site. But to really see his genius you need to look at the videos on his site. If you want to learn about motion, Newton’s Law of Gravitation, venture capital, or even the French Revelolution – go to this site. The founder (and faculty) of Khan Academy is Salman Khan. You can see his talk at the Good Experience Living Conference here: www.khanacademy.org/about#GEL. Bill Gates thinks highly of Salman Khan, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A07Pj71TUA. KhanAcademy has over 1,900 videos on YouTube and thousands of videos on KhanAcademy. Great resourse.  Interesting material. Fantastic presentation. Excellent teacher.

The second site that has fantastic video is CommonCraft. See www.commoncraft.com. The site was started and developed by Lee Lefever. He founded the company with his wife Sachi in 2003. See About. The tag line of the site is “in Plain English”. In fact, Lefever started writing blog posts and then switched to videos of his drawings. See RSS in Plain English. Topics include CFL Light Bulbs, Blogs, Twitter, Social Media, and Social Networking.  For a full list of his videos have a look at www.commoncraft.com/videos. Awesome video. Easy to understand.

The third site is TED, Ideras worth spreading. See www.ted.com. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The topics and videos are avant garde. How about this topic: Carolyn Porco flies us to Saturn? Porco takes us on a journey from Earth to Saturn. Or this topic: Jeff Han demos his breakthrough touchscreen – multi touch and pressure sensitive computer screens. Of course this technology is now commonplace but this video was shot in Feb 2006 which makes it phenomenal. Or Sirena Huang playing violin – she’s 11 years old. She is good. Or Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen. Rosling’s website is www.gapminder.org.

The last video site for today is Vimeo. See http://vimeo.com. This site is for the creative types. Have a look at Chromeo’s video, Hot Mess. 5-Second Films has over 500 very short videos in its catelog. See http://vimeo.com/fivesecondfilms/videos.

John Jantsch of Duct Marketing fame is coming to Calgary on Tuesday, October 26.

“His Duct Tape Marketing Blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing and is a Harvard Business School featured marketing site. John will share a savvy and cost-effective approach guaranteed to get results in today’s dynamic marketing environment.”

You can register for the event here. Tickets are discounted to $99 until October 14th.