In the first chapter, author Dan Zarrella, a social media strategist at Hubspot.com, summarizes his research regarding consumer e-book preferences. He surveyed more than 1,000 American adults who own a computer or e-reader and have a job paying $70,000 or more a year.

I’m sharing just a few gems from that research here. I think it’s useful to authors even if the people surveyed don’t exactly fit your reader demographics. I recommend buying the book so you can get even more information on e-book readers, but also so that you can read Zarrella’s interpretation of the data.

Most of the book, though, is about what, how, and when to share information on social media platforms.

What do they read?

While Zarrella was primarily interested in business book readers, he uncovered other useful information:

• About 65 percent said they read e-books at least once a month.
• Less than half said they read business books (Zarrella was doing the research with business e-books in mind).
• Nearly half said they read fiction e-books.
• Women were more likely to read fiction e-books than men, while men were more likely to read business e-books than women.
• Both men and women were less likely to read entertainment e-books than the other three categories – business, fiction, and current events.

How did they hear about the e-books they read?

Zarrella also asked people how they heard about e-books they read. He learned that:

• 45 percent learned about them directly from Amazon (more women than men).
• About 35 percent said “recommendations from friends” (more women than men).
• The third most common way readers heard about e-books was through search engines (more men than women).

Lessons from the data

What can you learn from Zarrella’s research into e-book reading and buying habits? These are my conclusions from his content on e-books as well as the rest of the book:

• You need  to make sure your book is available in an e-book format because people are reading e-books.
• While you want your book available for sale in as many outlets as possible, Amazon rules, so make sure it’s available there.
• Word-of-mouth marketing is essential. Help that along by making sure you use social sharing toolbars and icons on your blog, by creating blog posts and tweets and images that are shareable, and by asking friends for support.
• Search engine optimization – SEO – is important to getting discovered online, especially if your audience is men.

I took a lot of notes when reading The Science of Marketing. It’s not for entry-level social media users, but if you already understand Twitter and Facebook basics, I highly recommend it. As you can see, just the information in the first chapter on e-book buyers could be worth the price of the book.

Where is your e-book selling the best? Amazon? B&N? The Kobo store? 

In his introduction (which is a must-read), he refers disdainfully to this oft-repeated social media advice:

• “Be awesome.”
• “Engage in the conversation.”
• “Have a personality.”

The definition of “awesome,” according to his research, depends on the social network. Twitter users like and retweet links, while Facebook users favor photos and blog readers like videos.

And do you really need to chat it up? Not on Twitter, according to Zarrella’s data. Before reading this book, I heard time and time again that I should engage with people on Twitter. We’re told to reply to comments on tweets and thank people for the retweets. It’s the opposite, according to Zarrella’s research, which shows that Twitter accounts with the largest followings have the lowest level of engagement. What they lack in chatter they make up for in links: The highly followed accounts tweet more links than accounts with fewer followers.

If you show a personality — yours or your company’s — make sure it’s a positive one. Across all networks, people like positive perspectives and information more than they like negative commentary. But, interestingly enough, they’ll take negative over neutral. Neutral is boring.

Conclusions, advice come from research

Zarrella’s book is based on data accumulated and analyzed in part through his job as a viral marketing scientist at Hubspot, Inc., a company that sells marketing software to customers using the Web to generate leads. He leads us through the dos and don’t by focusing our attention on the numbers coming out of research about how people use social media. The book is loaded with graphs showing us how often people click on paid search advertising or the relationship between the time you tweet and the click-through rate.

Of particular value to authors is the first chapter on e-books, with its statistics on reader preferences for genre, format,  and length. (I’ll share more on this in the February 12, 2014 issue of the Build Book Buzz e-newsletter; subscribe at https://buildbookbuzz.com.)

The Science of Marketing also shares data and advice on SEO (search engine optimization) and devotes chapters to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, blogging, and e-mail marketing.

Data changes my behavior

Here are just four of the many things I’ll be doing differently after reading Zarrella’s book:

1. Scheduling blog posts for the morning, not afternoon.
2. Adding more photos to marketing-related status updates on Facebook.
3. Losing the guilt over not having the time to interact more with Twitter connections.
4. Adding “new blog post” to my new blog post tweets.

I found the book extremely useful and recommend it to anyone using social media for marketing purposes, but it does have one flaw: the lack of attention to LinkedIn. Considering it’s the third largest social network and much larger than Pinterest, I would have expected a chapter on that social network.

Fortunately, it’s not a fatal flaw.

What’s your favorite book on how to use social networks effectively?

They pulled the list from The Science of Marketing: What to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven Strategies by Dan Zarrella, an inbound marketing manager at Hubspot. (Read a free sample chapter courtesy of Hubspot.)

Which word do you think gets retweeted the most, according to Zarrella’s research?

It’s “you.”

What word gets retweeted the least?

“Game.”

“You” suggests that the content being retweeted is focused on helping others, while “game” indicates that the tweet is more personal in nature — as in “I’m watching the game,” which isn’t the kind of content we retweet. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for personal tweets. There is — they help us get to know you better. But don’t expect your tweets with “gme,” “lol” or “tired” to get retweeted because it isn’t going to happen.

Tips for getting retweeted

If you want others to help you extend your reach by retweeting your messages, make sure they:

• Focus on others
• Use the words in the list on the Where Writers Win blog post
• Contain helpful information that’s interesting to others

Messages that are self-serving or self-centered won’t be shared nearly as much as those that serve others. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to use Twitter properly for book promotion. (Get a few tips in this article.)

What’s your best Twitter tip for getting retweets?