The 12 Best Marketing Tips Delivered by Corgis
The First Round-Up of the Best Friday Fun Facts
Way back in October 2013, the TrackMaven CX team decided to give our customers the .GIFt. . .err, gift, that would keep on giving. Specifically, we wanted to give something that would help them with their work or, at minimum, brighten their days.
Our choice? An artesian well of marketing trivia with each piece wrapped around an adorable corgi-related .gif visible inside the app to all customers logging in on Fridays.
The response to what we named “Friday Fun Facts” (FFFs) was surprisingly enthusiastic. As it happens, our customers love marketing trivia and couldn’t get enough! The FFF has become a weekly tradition at TrackMaven with a unique installment every Friday. So far, we’ve had FFFs about blogging, social marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, mobile responsiveness, word of mouth, and email marketing.
About 10% of our customers have asked us to publish an archive of the FFFs independently. So, by popular demand, the TrackMaven CX team has compiled the first 12 Friday Fun Facts here for your edification and amusement.
Hope you enjoy our marketing trivia, tips, and tricks!
Facebook Marketing Facts
We’ve had two Facebook-related FFFs so far…
Friday Fun Fact No. 1
Did you know that there are optimal times and rhythms to post your marketing content on Facebook? Social media scientist Dan Zarrella found that Facebook posts published early in the morning and on weekends are most likely to be shared, and that posting every other day is most effective.
Although not proven via scientific rigor, observational analysis indicates that corgi photos improve Facebook interactions by 400,000%.
Friday Fun Fact No. 7
Here’s a triple-dose of tips for boosting interactions on Facebook.
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Leave Blanks! Fill-in-the-blank posts generate 90% more engagement than the average text post.
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Include Photos. Photo posts earn 104% more comments, 84% more link clicks, and 53% more likes. Overall engagement is 120% higher.
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Keep it short…or extra long. Posts under 100 characters and posts over 350 characters tend to perform better than posts between 100 and 350 characters.
Now, release the corgis!!
So far, there’s been one FFF about Instagram marketing.
Friday Fun Fact No. 3
If you’re marketing on Instagram, these stats will help you get the most bang for your buck:
Hashtags. 5 is the most #effective #number of #hashtags to use per post, if you’re looking to #boost #discovery.
Filters. “No filter” is the most common filter. “Mayfair”-filtered images earn the most comments and likes.
Day. For images, Thursday is the most popular posting day. However, image performance is not affected by day-of-week. On the other hand, Instagram videos earn most interactions when posted on weekends or otherwise outside of business hours.
Plenty more facts included in The Fortune 500 Instagram Report.
Two of our facts are about LinkedIn marketing…
LinkedIn Marketing Facts
Fun Fact No. 8
Friday Fun Fact No. 8 is about simple tricks for boosting engagement on LinkedIn, in case the end-of-year rush has left you feeling like this little guy:
On LinkedIn, a little something extra goes a long way to boosting interactions!
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Updates with images have a 98% higher comment rate.
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Updates with links earn 48% more likes and interactions.
- Adding a question to your update increases comments by 45% on average.
Friday Fun Fact No. 12
Even this little guy knows it’s sometimes a struggle to get attention.
This FFF is all about getting attention on LinkedIn!
Best times: The best times for a LinkedIn post are primarily before the work day from 7am to 9am and after the the work day from 5pm to 6pm. Posts around noon, when the audience can be caught on a lunch break, can also gain traction.
Worst times: LinkedIn posts during business hours have significantly less interaction, but the worst time to post is overwhelmingly 10pm to 6am, when most professionals are (supposedly!) asleep.
Best Days of the Week: Only 13% of LinkedIn users check up on the site daily, so the day of the week you choose to post is important.
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Tuesday through Thursday are the most active days on the network and the best times to post.
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Saturdays and Sundays can work due to some professionals using the weekend to catch up on their social networks.
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Mondays are when professionals are just getting back into their routines, and many folks start their weekend early on Fridays from time-to-time, making both poorer times for posting.
Here’s a summary in case it’s handy!
Twitter Marketing Facts
We’ve had one FFF about Twitter, but given the findings in our analysis for the Retweet Report, we probably should have had more!
Friday Fun Fact No. 9
Friday Fun Fact No. 9 is a triple-decker for boosting engagement on Twitter!
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Day of Week Matters! Tweets posted on Sunday earn the most Retweets!
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Night Tweeting Really Works! Tweets sent after business hours earn the most retweets, with peak time for interactions between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM.
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Spell Out that CTA! Spelling out the word ‘retweet’ in a call-to-action is 10X more effective at earning retweets than the abbreviated form, ‘RT’.
Hungry for more? TrackMaven analyzed 1.7M tweets to find out exactly what works on Twitter. Our full analysis can be found in The Retweet Report.
Blog-Related Facts
We’ve had two FFFs about blog marketing…
Friday Fun Fact No. 2
Blogs are currently used by about 60% of companies (including TrackMaven). There’s good reason too-B2B companies who blog regularly see a monthly lead increase of ruff-ly 67 percent.
Don’t get lazy when it comes to updating content: only about 35% of company bloggers post at least once a month-yikes!
Fun Fact No. 11
B2B Companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those that don’t.
Most business blogs are read in the morning, which supports publishing early in the day. Mondays are the best days for blog traffic, but there is evidence from Social Fresh that supports publishing on Thursdays to increase social shares.
And speaking of social shares, Wharton Professor Jonah Berger’s recipe for driving sharing starts with social currency. More specifically, Berger’s baseline for sharable content is that people share things that make them look good. In Contagious, Berger explains “people prefer to share things that make them seem entertaining, rather than boring, clever, rather than dumb, and hip rather than dull.” It makes sense, right? To “mint social currency” in your blog posts, follow Berger’s trifecta for encouraging shares:
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Find the inner remarkability in the subject matter
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Set up the content so sharing conveys status*
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Make sharers feel like insiders
*Berger’s exact words for this are “leverage game mechanics.”
Miscellaneous Marketing Facts
We’ve also had a handful of FFFs that defy categorization.
Friday Fun Fact No. 4
Always on the go? So is your audience. With 91% of US citizens within reach of their mobile device 24/7, and more than half of mobile users preferring to check the smartphones rather than ‘sit and think’ during downtime, it makes sense to give your audience something other than their snapchats to view on their phones and tablets.
It’s important to note that the mobile audience is picky — 72% expect to experience the same quality of content across all their devices. So whether it’s a responsive site or native ads that render across screens marketing to a mobile audience is a must!
Friday Fun Fact No. 5
Friday Fun Fact No. 5 is astounding, kind of like this fellow:
Word of mouth is the “primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.” Whether the words are shared by talking or online chatter is inconsequential in regards to effectiveness, but that notwithstanding, the volume of word of mouth recommendations is overwhelmingly in-person. Only 7% of word of mouth occurs online.
Source: Jonah Berger’s Contagious
Friday Fun Fact No. 10
If your email marketing results have you feeling like you’re on thin ice…
One of the easiest things you can do to lift your stats is include social sharing buttons in your email-they increase click-through rates by 168%!
If you’re keen to try another tactic, including the first name of your recipient in the subject line has a big lift too. In fact, the last time TrackMaven tested this approach, our open rates were above 80% in a sample of 65.
And that’s all of the FFF for now! If you’re a TrackMaven customer you’ll get these every Friday. If you aren’t and until you become one :D, expect these roundups every two months!
Blaire Kotsikopoulos See more of Blaire's posts
