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WHEN TO TWEET, WHAT TO POST,

HOW TO BLOG, AND OTHER

PROVEN STRATEGIES

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Cover image: Atom © Pavlen/iStockphoto, Icons © Logorilla/iStockphoto

Cover design: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 by Dan Zarrella. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best

efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the

accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifi cally disclaim any implied warran-

ties of merchantability or fi tness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended

by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may

not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither

the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Zarrella, Dan.

Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven

Strategies/Dan Zarrella.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-118-13827-4 (cloth); ISBN: 978-1-118-26349-5(ebk);

ISBN: 978-1-118-23306-1 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-118-22528-8 (ebk)

1. Internet marketing—Social aspects. 2. Social media. I. Title.

HF5415.1265.Z367 2013

658.8'72—dc23 2013000733

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To my fans, friends, and fellow scientists

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vii

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I Content 7

1 E-Books 9

2 Webinars 25

Part II Channels 35

3 SEO 37

4 Twitter 53

5 Facebook 75

6 Pinterest 101

7 Blogging 109

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viii Contents

Part III Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) 127

8 E-Mail Marketing 129

9 Lead Generation 153

Part IV Analytics 171

10 Analytics 173

Index 185

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ix

Acknowledgments

Thank You!

All my fellow HubSpotters, especially Mike Volpe, Kipp Bodnar,

and Rebecca Corliss. My lovely and talented wife Alison. My fam-

ily Mom, Barb, BJ, Joe, Terri, Diana, Jenn, Gramma, and Grampa.

All my friends from Wand Fight Team, especially Dave “The Pain

Train” Mazany and Leandro Lorenco.

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1

Introduction

I read a lot of books about marketing. I read a lot of blog posts,

attend a lot of conferences, and follow a lot of marketers on Twitter.

I ’m saddened by the overwhelming amount of superstition-based

advice I see. I call it unicorns and rainbows—snake oil adages such

as “Be awesome,” “Engage in the conversation,” and “Have a per-

sonality.” These things sound great. And they ’re hard to disagree

with; I ’m not going to tell you to be not-awesome. But they ’re not

based in anything more substantial than what sounds right.

And when we do get data about social media platforms, user

behavior, or digital communications channels, much of it slowly

emerges out of the scholastic system, produced by academics isolated

from the marketing trenches. Science like this is interesting, sure, but

it ’s largely data for data ’s sake, devoid of applicable lessons. We need

more street-smart work conducted by researchers with real-world

marketing experience. This kind of work is useful and effi cient. It

allows you to decide how to apply it so that you can do your job better.

As a social media scientist, I use data, experimentation, and real

science to understand how people behave online and how we, as

marketers, can leverage that behavior. I want to give you the data

you need to get stuff done and to be successful.

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2 Introduction

But it is important to understand how to apply marketing science

to your business. Think about the difference between how research

works in fi elds such as physics and how it works in a fi eld like medi-

cine. In physics, there are mathematical formulas that show how

a force like electromagnetism works. That force will always follow

that formula.

Medical researchers, on the other hand, test new kinds of

treatments on hundreds or thousands of subjects. From those

experiments, they produce best practice courses of treatment. In

specifi c cases your doctor will start with the most indicated course

of treatment. If it works, great; you ’re cured. If it doesn ’t work, your

doctor will try the next most indicated course. Best practices gener-

ated from large sample sets are tested in specifi c cases in which the

results may differ.

It is this second example that teaches us how to use the market-

ing data in this book. My work is based on databases of thousands

or millions of rows. My data span industries, audiences, time zones,

and languages. I work to produce best practice suggestions from

these data, but your business may be different. And I try to focus on

data that aren ’t highly self-evident; I want to suggest new ways of

doing marketing. I want to make you better at what you do, not just

reaffi rm what you ’re already doing.

The fi nal chapter of this book isn ’t meant to be the end-all

instruction manual on analytics. It ’s meant to provide you with a

framework for applying the all the data I ’m presenting, through the

scientifi c method, to your business.

I work for HubSpot, a business-to-business (B2B) company that

sells marketing software to a customer base that is largely using the

Web to generate leads. My default mind-set when I approach mar-

keting is as a B2B lead wrangler. Even so, often when I talk at con-

ferences, I ’m asked if the data I ’m sharing can be applied outside

of the business-to-consumer (B2C) world. Too many people think

that “cool” marketing happens only in the consumer world and that

B2B marketing has to be boring, stilted, and corporate.

In one survey I conducted, I asked takers if they had separate

work and personal inboxes. A full 88 percent told me they did

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Introduction 3

not. More people reported having a separate junk-only inbox.

Focus group discussions have confi rmed this as well. You ’ll

read more about these stats in the chapter on e-mail marketing

(Chapter 8 ), but the point is simple: business consumers are still

consumers.

Boring is bad for B2C, and it ’s bad for B2B. Nobody wants to

be put to sleep by marketing messages, regardless of what hat that

person is wearing at the moment—personal or corporate. You need

to be more concerned about being labeled “spam” than getting

the right “work” e-mail address. If you ’re a B2B company, don ’t be

afraid to make content like a B2C marketer. Be afraid to write white

papers full of technical jargon like the rest of your industry.

I did the research presented in this book over a period of nearly

fi ve years. Throughout that time, I ’ve noticed several threads run-

ning through the data. You ’ll hear about these concepts in many of

the chapters to come, but I want to introduce you to them fi rst.

The Conversation Doesn ’t Build Reach

One of the most pervasive bits of social media unicorns-and-

rainbows advice I read is about the all-important conversation. The

superstition tells us that if we ’re not constantly chatting with our

Twitter followers, Facebook fans, or blog commenters, we ’re doing

social wrong.

But when I looked around at the social media accounts that had

the biggest reach, I was puzzled. Celebrities have a lot of Twitter fol-

lowers and Facebook likes, but they don ’t do much chatting beyond

their circle of actual friends. Media outlets are popular, too, but they

just share a constant stream of stories. In fact, there aren ’t any good

examples of people, brands, or businesses that are not celebrities,

huge companies with giant advertising budgets, or extremely early

adopters that have built large audiences in social through the so-

called conversation.

In the chapters on Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and Pinterest,

you ’ll see data that continually challenge the hegemony of the

“engage in the conversation” adage.

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4 Introduction

Positivity Works Better Than Negativity, but Both Are

Better Than Neutrality

Many times the data contradict the Kumbaya, feel good adages so

prevalent in the communications world, but sometimes they don ’t.

Sometimes they support it. Sentiment is one of those cases.

Typically when I ’ve studied sentiment and its relationship to

content performance or social media reach, I fi nd that positivity

does better than negativity. Your readers mostly don ’t want to get

angry or sad; they want to be happy and feel good. We ’ve all known

someone who ’s a Debbie Downer or Negative Nancy. Even when

we ’re sharing amazing news about our lives or telling a hilarious

joke we just heard, these people have some bummer information to

share to rain on the parade. After a while, you get sick of these guys

and you don ’t want to be around them anymore. Don ’t be that guy.

The data dopes, however, hold an interesting twist on the old

be positive saw. When I compared not just positivity to negativity

but also both against neutrality, I found that neutrality performs

the worst. It is better to be positive than negative, especially as a

habit. But if you have a choice only between neutrality and nega-

tivity, negativity can work. Controversy and drama can stimulate

attention and sharing, but tread carefully. Don ’t get a reputation for

being a bummer.

Contra-Competitive Timing

Probably the most citied work I ’ve done is about timing. Every time

I release a body of research, some of the most popular numbers are

the ones about time of day and day of week. So I ’ve looked at tim-

ing everywhere I could, and in most of the places I looked, I found a

simple, surprising pattern I call contra-competitive timing.

Imagine you ’re at a noisy party. People are talking, music is

playing, and glasses are clinking. You ’re straining to hear what the

person standing a few feet from you is saying. So you start telling a

story, and about halfway through it, the entire party becomes silent

for a brief moment and everyone hears about how you wet the bed

until you were 13.

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Introduction 5

That ’s contra-competitive timing. It is easier to be heard when

everyone else isn ’t talking. Too often marketers look for the time

when channels are most active and assume that ’s the best time to

engage. In my data about e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and in some

cases, blogging, I ’ve found that weekends and evenings tend to have

higher response rates than those times of the day traditionally con-

sidered busier.

During the business day, people have stuff to do. They ’re hard

at work. Sure, they probably check Facebook or their inboxes, but

they ’re pretty unlikely to be dawdling there for long. When they get

home from the offi ce, though, they ’ve got more time. Fewer meet-

ings and to-do list tasks are vying for their attention. And fewer

marketers are sending e-mails and tweets. During which of these

times do you think people are easier to reach?

In many of the following chapters, I ’ll cover the data that form

the foundation of this theory. And I ’ll talk about how you can use

these data to experiment with off-peak timing.

Social Calls to Action

Marketers have been using calls to action for centuries. We ’ve

known since the dawn of time that if you want someone to do some-

thing, the easiest way is to ask that person to do it. Online market-

ers aren ’t without this tactic either, calls to action (CTAs) such as

“Click here,” “Sign up now,” and “Act fast” are all over the Web.

But for some reason, when we started using social media for market-

ing, we lost all respect for the ask.

Irving Kirsch, a researcher at the University of Connecticut,

did an experiment with a group of suggestible subjects (people who

can be hypnotized). Half of the group was put under full hypnotic

trance, handed a stack of 30 postcards, and had a hypnotic instruc-

tion implanted to mail one card per day back to the researchers.

The other half of the group received similar stacks but were simply

asked, not under trance, to send the cards back. The second group

sent more back. When dealing with suggestible people, polite social

requests work just as well as full on spiral-eyes trances and swinging

pocket watches hypnotic commands.

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6 Introduction

Social CTAs work. They work on Twitter, on Facebook, and

in blog posts. In upcoming chapters, I ’ll show you my research into

which ones work the best and how you can begin experimenting

with them.

Combined Relevance

A few years ago, I was doing some experimentation with an early

social media site, Digg. I created a website, USBAbsintheSpoon

.com and uploaded a Photoshopped image of an absinthe spoon

with a USB connector on the end.

If you ’re not familiar with it, absinthe is a turn-of-the-century

alcoholic drink that is supposedly hallucinogenic and defi nitely dis-

gusting. It ’s very strong and is fl avored with star anise. To make it more

palatable, you have to add sugar, so absinthe spoons were invented:

fancy slotted spoons that rest on the top of the glass. You put a sugar

cube on the spoon and pour water over it into the absinthe.

My USBAbsintheSpoon didn ’t do anything. In fact, I never

even made one; there was no spoon. But when I posted it to Digg,

people went crazy for it. It got hundreds of comments, thousands of

votes, and tens of thousands of visitors. In a few days, all the big gad-

get blogs on the Web were covering it and I was fi elding calls from

small town news reporters doing segments on the weirdest gadgets.

I had stumbled into a very useful tactic for creating social media

content: combined relevance. When I took two seemingly distinct

interests, absinthe and gadgets, and combined them, those people

who were fans of both became super-fans of my spoon. It felt like it

was specifi cally created for them. Turns out, however, that there are

a lot of geeks who are also into terrible antique booze.

In the chapters of this book, you ’ll read suggestions for topics

and words that perform well in various marketing channels. If your

business operates in one of these areas, great; you ’ve got it that

much easier. But if your company is outside of those niches, you ’ll

have to use combined relevance to get more creative. Think about

how you can blend the subjects you ’re an expert in with those hot

topics people love to read, forward, retweet, and like.

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PART

IContent

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9

1 E-Books

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