Email continues to have the highest percentage of referrals and social media leading with high click throughs
Christine Pepin
Lead Media Coordinator
Among all the social media channels, which is the most effective way of sharing content? In a recent report by SocialTwist, a million referrers of their Tell-a-Friend widget were analyzed to discover trends about social media sharing behavior from August 2009 to July 2010. They also presented some interesting comparisons to other media such as email and instant messaging. So where is the true value… in a tweet, Facebook share or email? Here’s the short-list according to their report:
Top Referral Sources
1.) Email: 55% (down 15% from last year)
a. Gmail: 37% market share
b. Yahoo: 26% (down from 44% last year)
2.) Social networks: 24%
a. Blogs: 52% share from WordPress, 42% from Blogger
3.) Instant messaging: 18%
a. Yahoo Messenger: Up 22% from 2009
b. Talk: Up 10% from 2009
Top CTR
1.) Social networks: 60% (up 16% from last year)
a. Facebook: 287% CTR
b. Twitter: 1904%
2.) Email: 31%
3.) Blogs: 8%
Think of these CTR statistics, however, in context with the amount of initial content provided. In an email, the user will generally receive the full piece of content immediately. Therefore, they will not need to click through the original site to read the item that someone shared with them. In contrast, many social networks have character restrictions so it then becomes necessary to do click for the full piece. As marketers though, we must consider the impact of taking the user back to the original site property. Upon returning to where the content originally resides, the customer is re-engaged with the brand, can interact with other advertisers’ products and given purchase opportunity. It is this reasoning that complements earlier research indicating that email shares leading to more engagement, and thus more conversions.
When diving into the breakdown by referrals, we see that Facebook, accounting for over 78% usage this year, is still the user’s first choice for sharing in the social networking space. MySpace and Twitter come in the next two positions with 14.5% and 5% respectfully.
