It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

If you’re using Hootsuite or another form of social media analytics, you’re probably aware of how many people are clicking through to your links. But how does Twitter compare to Facebook for click-throughs?

A new report by marketing firm SocialTwist suggests that overall, Twitter is the most effective social media tool for click-throughs, despite being only the third most popular site for sharing.

The study looked at a million referral messages sent using the company’s Tell-a-Friend tool. Their tool allows visitors to your blog or site to share the content with their friends, either over email or social media sites. Of those messages, 55% are sent through email. 24% came from social sites, 18% through IM, 3% through bookmarks, and only 0.1% through blogs.

While email is still the most popular medium for sharing links, its popularity seems to be on the wane: it was down 15% on the previous year. Further, it produces just 31% of all click-throughs, while social media channels are responsible for 60% of all click-throughs (CTRs).

The Social Network vs Twitter

So which social media network is the most popular site for link-sharing? You guessed it, Facebook. It makes up 78% of those sharing to a social network, with MySpace coming in a surprise second at 14.5% and Twitter at just 5%.

But while it may be sitting in a rather lowly third place, Twitter does a lot more with its tiny market share. On average, a link shared on Twitter gets 19.04 clicks, compared to 2.87 for those shared on Facebook.

Twitter seems to be leading with a quality over quantity approach. Clearly the target market for Twitter is more suited to click-throughs. Twitter is about sharing information and spreading the word, while Facebook is more about personal rather than professional relationships. Plus, Facebook is something of a “walled garden”, designed to keep people entertained on-site rather than encouraging people to go elsewhere.

How often do you click links on Facebook? And when was the last time you logged into your MySpace?!

Source: FastCompany

Image: [Davichi]

Related article

• More Content Shared on Facebook but Twitter Click-through Rate Much Higher (adamsherk.com)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.