Marketing Pilgrim

When it comes to posting on Facebook, we’ve looked at what times of day are best, which days of the week are best and whether random posts can help you market your product.

Now, Facebook has gone a step further with a scientific look at word choices on updates. In order to study the words, millions of updates were fed into a computer and broken down by their corresponding Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) categories. Categories referenced parts of speech (pronouns, prepositions, verbs), general topic (work, school, family) or emotional response (happy, sad, angry).

The computer then took the category numbers and sorted them by age groups, time of day and by the popularity of the account. If you want to see all the detailed charts, visit this page on Facebook. If you’ll settle for a quick overview, then stick around.

Have you ever thought about having your English website available in Spanish as well? You might want to consider it after you look at these stats from a new ComScore study.

The study was commissioned by Terra, a global, digital media company and bilingual content producer and was administered to 2,300 Hispanic adults (13 and over) living in the United States.

The most interesting finding was that across the board, Hispanics showed a higher participation rate in social media than their non-Hispanic counterparts.

24% compared to 18% viewed a live stream, 26% vs 16% posting ratings and reviews and 18% vs 12% purchased a product due to a recommendation. The study also found that Hispanics were more receptive to receiving updates for offline activities such as movies and restaurant deals through mobile text, Twitter or Facebook.

Over at Forbes, I’ve been moonlighting as someone that writes well enough to, well, write for Forbes.

I’m pretty “chuffed” with my latest article which shuns the trend of making 2011 predictions and instead focuses on the unwritten laws of reputation management in 2011.

Here are the first three to whet your appetite…

Law #1 – Everyone has an online reputation

We all have an online reputation to maintain. Don’t believe me, go ahead and “Google Yourself”–I promise you won’t go blind! Even if you don’t find anything written about you, then that’s still your reputation–or lack thereof. In 2011, you should make sure that what’s found in Google, Facebook, Twitter et al is something you’d be equally comfortable showing your mom or your boss!

Following the much publicized courtship of Groupon then eventual rejection that Google got, many questions are swirling around the search giant as to what they will do next in the space they were looking to buy into.

Google’s VP of Consumer Products, Marissa Mayer, did an interview for Mediabistro’s WebNewser and was asked about next steps in that space. The gist of the answer (that starts around the 3 minute mark) is this

We already do things like this with coupons etc …. We are looking at how we can take that technology and put it to use in the location space.

I was made aware study that was done by Forbes Insights in conjunction with Google about video and the business executive. Hmmmmm, Google and video, I wonder what the connection is? Anyway, here was the audience.

Forbes Insights, in association with Google, surveyed more than 300 C-level and senior executives at large U.S. companies ($500 million-plus in annual revenues) to learn more about how they are approaching Web video as a source of business-related information.

The chart below shows who did what after watching a business video. This chart comes from eMarketer (Note: We refer to them often because they make data from various sources a little cleaner to understand in graphical form. Thanks eMarketer).

Here’s where it got interesting to me. The paragraph following the above chart in the eMarketer article reads

In just two days, thousands of tech-loving folks will descend upon Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Here, tech companies large and small will present the latest achievements in audio, video, computing, and mobile and they’ll be doing it with the help of social media.

Foursquare is turning badges into prizes by rewarding attendees for checkins. Five out of ten possible checkin spots will earn you a “coveted” CES badge. You can even parlay that badge into a an actual button that you can wear proudly throughout the show. Badge holders who complete the required checkins will be entered in a drawing to win a huge prize pack of nifty electronics.