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The Science of Social Media [Video]

 

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HubSpot's social media scientist, Dan Zarrella visited Harvard this week and shared some of his research about the science of social media as it applies to marketing.  Dan attends many events where  people share social media advice and most of it is what he calls ‘unicorns and rainbows.’

Stuff like ‘engage in the conversation’ or ‘hug your followers.’ It’s good sounding advice, and hard to disagree with. He says, "I am not going to tell you to punch your customers in the face. The problem is that it’s not based on anything more substantial than what ‘feels right’ typically". Dan likes to get beyond the unicorns and rainbows, into the real data, the real science of social media about why people behave the way they do online and how marketers can leverage that behavior.

Check out the video below for Dan's full presentation at Harvard. What do you think about the data he presents?

The Science of Social Media from HubSpot on Vimeo.

Live Webinar: The Science of Email Marketing

Live Webinar: The Science of Email Marketing

Posted by Kipp Bodnar on Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 02:30 PM

COMMENTS

Great presentation. Enjoyed the data and slides - love great slides that enhance the story. 
 
The data showing users viewing, retweeting, etc on weekends is great. Most people I know avoid the end of the week and shoot for Tuesdays which seems like a safe time. When you think about it though how many people wait until Saturday when it's quite to go through things.

posted on Friday, January 28, 2011 at 8:54 PM by MS


Thats a good demonstration, thanks for the lively demonstration of Social Media. Great job Guys

posted on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 4:07 AM by Lace Manufacturers


Dan is so doggone charming -- self-effacing, nerdily passionate, devoid of ego ... He could easily pull off his own tv show. He was almost wasting his immense talent on these Harvard students. Myself, I'm a new fan for life. go Dan!!!

posted on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 7:06 AM by Paige henson


Great presentation Dan, I find explaining social media to my customers tends to be hard. Is anybody getting the difference between a social media and a site like Google. Think about where the content comes from, Social media is "people" generated content which is what makes them social media such as Facebook.

posted on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 9:00 AM by David Nielsen


I really enjoyed this talk. 
 
 
 
There are number of intuitive concepts that get confirmed here and others that get rebuffed. Either way it is refreshing to see a talk that uses actual data while bring in references to Memetics and Evolutionary Psychology. 
 
 
 
A couple of the intuitive concepts that are confirmed: 
 
Increased self references equals fewer followers. 
 
Increased negative remarks equals fewer followers. 
 
 
 
Click-through-rate actually going up on weekends, goes against my own experiences and data sets, but it has me thinking about trying to release more content on the weekends. This especially includes longer multimedia content like video talks and podcast, that even if clicked through during the week, are unlikely to actually be viewed in a work environment. 
 
 
 
Dan Zarrella's work is now firmly entrenched on my attention radar. I look forward to his continue research and talks. 
 

posted on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 5:03 PM by Josh Davis


Hi Dan the most interesting finding to me is that negative tweets =less followers. This appears to be the opposite of traditional news outlets that tend to focus on war, negativity, fighting, controversy, murder etc. 
Very odd

posted on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 8:05 PM by Jen Bishop


I love Dan's blog. Maybe we should release his sayings (like the Sayings of Lao Tzu or Werner Erhardt, e.g.: Scarce knowledge is the most valuable. All that is viral is not good. Perpetually negative and self-referential people are destined to be alone. Hope is viral. Especially on weekends...  
 
Of course, unlike other philosophers -- Dan has the data to prove his point :-)

posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 8:16 AM by Glenn


Enjoyed your presentation Dan. Appreciate the fact-based approach to used in presenting the workshop. Looking forward to more webinars. Please let me know when you will be in the Washington DC Area. I host a business breakfast networking group. Would love to have you as a speaker. 
 
 
 
Yasmin Anderson-Smith

posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 12:51 PM by KYMS Image


this is a wonderfull articles. but, i think, i can help to completely a statement... 
you must make a video to make a protomotion. sometimes,most people cant make video for online. here, i will talking about how make video player on internet.check here 
<title>Easy Video Player</title> 
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posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 6:06 PM by armyclan


Are there really more Matrix movies coming out? :) 
 
Dan, you're right, you're not funny, but you gave me some great insight into how to approach my new clients. Much appreciated.

posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 9:22 PM by Malechi Tech


This is really a nice and informative video and the examples are awesome.

posted on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 5:52 AM by Shree


Interesting presentation, we at www.winegifts4u.co.uk tend to do all our social media marketing Monday to Friday during normal working hours. Will probably have to re-think how we would could do more at weekends. Like the presentation style.

posted on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 8:03 AM by WineGifts4U


Dan, I wish I could have been present for this, but I am so glad that you and the team at HubSpot had camera's present and shared it with the world. I have seen some of those charts before, but for you to put a human feel to it really made things connect. You explained these amazing concepts successfully "at a 4th grade level" and at the same time were witty and approachable in your tone.

posted on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 7:08 PM by Jared Clemence


Comments have been closed for this article.