When is the Best Time To Tweet and Post on Facebook

There are few resources better than URL shortener bitly for monitoring click-through rates for content shared on Facebook and Twitter. So when bitly released a report last month telling us all the best time to tweet or post to Facebook for click-throughs, we listened. And then we created an infographic. – By Juanmarketing on julio 5, 2012

This handy infographic highlights bitly’s data on the best times to share content on Twitter or Facebook if you’re looking to drive traffic to your site (or any site). Bitly found the best times to tweet for click-throughs are early afternoon Monday – Thursday, while Facebook content posted Wednesday at 3 p.m. generates the highest click-through rates, according to bitly’s data.

But why read words when you can look at pictures? Here’s the best-time-to-tweet-or-post-to-Facebook infographic created by digital agency Raka with data provided by bitly:

Infographics and the Science of Visual Communication

Brain science offers some insight into why infographics are so effective. – by Mark Smiciklas · July 3, 2012
One of the primary reasons infographics work well as a communication tool can be linked to eyesight and the neurological connection of our eyes and brain.

The dynamics of sight and how we use our eyes to process information present some compelling reasons to consider using infographics to share information and ideas in order to connect with your internal and external audiences.
Hard wired for infographics

Vision directly or indirectly accounts for about 50% of our brain’s real estate.

An article about the relationship of the eyes and brain in Discover Magazine touches on the expansiveness of the cell highway that hosts all this activity. For example, the retina alone is made up of more than 150 million cells. In addition, vision neurons account for approximately 30% of our total grey matter compared to neurons for touch and hearing which make up only 8% and 3%, respectively.
Infographics are easy on the mind

Considering all this hard wiring is already in place, it makes sense that it might be easier for us to process infographics than pure text.

Robert Lane and Dr. Stephen Kosslyn offer an explanation for what the brain sees when it comes to pictures vs. words. Each letter in a word is essentially a symbol. To read text, the brain needs to act as a decoder first, matching those letters with shapes stored in memory. From there the brain must figure out how all the letters fit together to form words, how words form sentences, and how sentences form paragraphs. Although all this comprehension takes place in only a split second, relatively speaking, when compared to how the brain deals with images, the process requires considerably more mental effort.

So, in a way, by using infographics to communicate, you make it physically easier for your audience to relate and connect to your information.

In a TED talk about the beauty of data visualization, writer and designer David McCandless expands on the idea that infographics provide a sense of relief in a landscape filled with a mind-numbing amount of information:

There’s something almost quite magical about visual information. It’s effortless. It literally pours in. If you’re navigating a dense information jungle, coming across a beautiful graphic or lovely data visualization is a relief. It’s like coming across a clearing in the jungle…more

13 ‘Pinteresting’ Facts About Pinterest Users

It’s no secret that the Internet loves Pinterest. Now, most users are even spending more time, on average, pinning than they are on hanging out on Facebook. Here’s what you need to know about Pinterest user demographics.

With an average of 1.36 million users daily, the social photo pinboard has taken the web by storm, and top online retailers are following suit. Who are these feverish pinners? According to full service agency Modea, the majority are female mothers — 28 percent have a household income of $100k+.

Using stats from comScore and a few other analyses, full service agency Modea has put a few interesting facts about Pinterest into visual form with this infographic.

Marvel At This Periodic Table Of Social Media

Recently, we shared LUMA Partner’s insane infographic showing how complicated social media has become. The post received a lot of feedback, largely centered around what was missing. There were a few major social media outlets that seemed near impossible to miss, mainly 2012’s darling child Pinterest.

The largest problem with LUMA’s graph was that it was created in June of 2011, long before Pinterest became nationally popular.

Never mind: hosting provider InMotion Hosting made a graphic a few months ago that included Pinterest and a few others, this time in the form of a periodic table. Put it this way, if you were going to try to tell your grandmother how she could advertise her organic blueberry business online, this is what you would use.

It’s still confusing, cluttered and ever-changing, but the periodic table provides at least some hope of creating a strategy to navigating the big social media networks.

Things are crowded down there, so you probably want to click to make it larger.