Here are some of the big takeaways:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

and

Ultimately, the goal for brands on Facebook is to be able to engage with their customers or potential customers and to promote a message. Last month, we looked at a study that broke down how users interact with brands on Facebook.

Yes, social media is here, and big brands are adopting it… and yes, they’re using all sorts of methods to gain “friends/followers.”  Check out the article, at AdWeek for the details.

Let me set-up the situation, we have been discussing some of the problems with Social Network Marketing here internally and wanted to start doing some data gathering, independent of big research firms. We wanted anecdotal evidence for our clients. We didn’t have a big budget to run ads, send email solicitations, etc. What we did have, however, is a good survey tool (provided by Survs.com), and the social networks themselves. We built a quick survey, (to get some initial findings, more short surveys will follow), and then posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, our Facebook page, and a couple of local business sites (like OCMetro). Within five minutes of posting about the survey we were beginning to get results.

This illustrates the point that when you’re talking to people that are engaged in your subject matter, and don’t ask them too many questions, you’ll get good results. The same thing can be done with product owners, VIP club members, etc. Even without an incentive to take the survey we got a 97% completion rate!

Not only did we get a successful survey, but, overall site traffic and awareness went up as shown by these stats:
Unique Site Visits (vs. prior week): +107%
Absolute Unique Visitors (vs. prior week): +92%
Pageviews (vs. prior week): +86%
Increase in Twitter followers (vs. prior week): +350%

In addition, traffic came from completely different sources than normal:
Search (organic & paid): -70.46% (vs. prior week))
Referral: +141.67% (vs. prior week)

If the referral traffic it came from the expected sources based on our efforts:
Facebook: 16.67%
Our Blog: 13.33%
Twitter: 8.33%
LinkedIn: 1.67%
Other: 1.67%

Now, enough about the positive effect of the survey, let’s look at the survey results:

How Many Social Networks Are You Using?

Most respondents (>80%) are using between 1 and 6 social networks. There were no respondents that were unaware of social networking, or un-connected; this isn’t surprising, however, given our solicitation methods.

Do You Read All Of Your “Friends” Updates?

In an unsurprising outcome, more than 60% of our respondents do not read all of their friend’s updates, stay tuned for our next survey where we ask the question, “Why Not?”

Tell Us About Those Updates

The last question was interesting, it asked what people thought of the updates from their friends. Over half (>54%) of those surveyed said that the updates kept them perfectly informed, or, lead to interesting places or information online. Only 18% said that they were too much information, and another 27% replied with “Other.” Of those “other” responses, here is one that was intriguing, “Updates can be interesting but many are worthless attempts at attention.” Most of the “other” responses were a combination of the other answers.

We would like to thank you for your participation in the survey, and remind you to stay tuned for more.

• Create linkages between services based on
  individually-controlled identity federation
• Compete on creating the most compelling social
  experience, not social graph lock-in
• Develop social applications that have meaning
• Integrate social networks into existing activities
• Design business models that reflect the value
  created by people’s social network

These are great ideas, it’s interesting to see that the "traditional" research companies are breaking new ground and helping us (digital/online/interactive folks) educate both the traditional agency folks and our clients.