Graphic courtesy of SHIFT Communications
SOCIAL PRESS RELEASES
PRNewswire
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48% of press release sharing happens on Facebook.
37% on happens on Twitter.
But each share on Twitter results in 30% more views.
THOUGHT: Yesterday, we talked online newsrooms, today it’s social media and press releases.
These numbers don’t surprise me for several reasons. Sharing is nice but the ultimate goal is to get people to click on your link to visit and read the release.
One, people use Twitter for active content discovery than they do Facebook, which is much more about interaction with people you know.
Two, Twitter is a public form while Facebook has privacy controls. That’s why you hear people discuss the dilemma of whether they should use their Facebook profile for business, pleasure or both but you never hear that conversation about Twitter.
Three, journalists are all over Twitter as a professional tool while fewer of them use Facebook in the same way.
Four, knowing this, public relations people such as yours truly develop relationships with media on Twitter in order to be able to pitch them stories.
Five, since this data is from an analysis of press releases, I think it’s safe to assume that a good percentage of the releases were written by people who have some skill at crafting a catchy headline, which I think works better in Twitter than in Facebook.
The study also found that multimedia components drive more traffic to a release than mere text releases. Adding a photo increased engagement by 14% and adding a photo, video, and audio increased engagement by 3.5 times.
It would be fascinating to see a breakout of the Facebook vs. Twitter numbers for this last set.
Consider that when sharing a link on Facebook, they system will often suck down a photo from the page to accompany the link. That graphic tends to draw the eye, making it more likely that the link may get clicked.
For Twitter, I’d like to see data on the efficacy of including the words PHOTO or PIC or VIDEO in the tweet would drive more click-throughs than otherwise.
THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Occupy Comics movement is using old school comics to fund the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Thank you for keyboards that take a licking and keep on clicking.
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