ALL FACEBOOK — According to a new report from Dan Zarrella, the weekend is the best time to post content on Facebook as articles posted then are shared the most. One explanation for the phenomenon was that more than half of companies block Facebook. While I’ve noticed that Twitter is the exact opposite, this report definitely sheds some light on Facebook user behavior...

THE SOCIAL TIMES — Understanding the viral invitation process and successful virality of Facebook social games is a subject that warrants deep investigation, and a formal paper on just such a topic has been released by a group of researchers and an industry veteran.  In "Diffusion Dynamics of Games on Online Social Networks," the group investigates the invitation process of users within social games, specifically focusing on "predicting invitation efficiency and understanding the group and social dynamics of invitation networks." Written by Xiao Wei, Jiang Yang from the University of Michigan, Ricardo Matsumura de Araújo from the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil and Manu Rekhi, VP of strategy, marketing, business and corporate development for Lolapps, the investigation begins by defining a smart terminology for the analysis of the viral spread of an application. That is, who is inviting who, who is accepting, and how/why are these processes occurring. Below are some of the key findings and statistics...

DAN ZARRELLA.COM — Us vs them is one of the oldest, and most powerful marketing ideas. Apple is a quintessential example: from their beginnings they’ve portrayed themselves as the small guy against the big powerful bully. In 1983 it was IBM and more recently its been Microsoft. The company turns customers into evangelists who are more than happy to spread the word about the good fight, but how exactly does it work?...

DAN ZARELLA.COM — Most marketers know that to get someone to do what you want, you have to ask them to do it, you have to have a call-to-action (CTA) that persuades them to buy your product. With social media marketing, the action we’re aiming for is to get our readers to share our content with their friends and networks, so our CTAs must entice them to do just that. Here’s the 5 most important concepts to think about when you’re constructing your viral calls to action...

INSIDE THE MARKETERS STUDIO — My friend Jeremy Epstein, who happens do so a fair amount of marketing for authors and is a great writer in his own right at the blog Never Stop Marketing, just came out with a great, brief read a little longer than his usual entries. Go figure - weeks ago I convinced him to add it to Scribd for easily downloading and of course I then didn't have time to write it up. The overall concept is to think like a dandelion to get your message to 'go viral.' It's hardly the only analogy in here - rather than getting too literal with the floral motif, he pulls in lessons from Johanes Gutenberg, Karl von Clausewitz, Microsoft Research, and then the Cluetrain Manifesto for good measure...