I guess I don’t have to introduce you to ShareThis. As a social media and/or (social) email marketing professional you know it’s a sharing network that enables users to, well…, share content.
In case this terrible introduction confuses you (I’m tired): look at the green button and you’ll know who I am talking about.
ShareThis released new data a few days ago about how content is shared and ‘how people engage with and spread shared information’.
First of all, some data on sharing (in case you still wonder why cross-channel sharing – email, social, mobile, blogs, whatever – and spreading of content is important).
According to ShareThis, sharing can drive up to one-third the traffic that search does. Now that’s a good reason.
Then comes some good news for email marketers that might feel that their favourite communications channel is in danger.
According to ShareThis, ‘email continues to be the primary channel chosen to share content and also maintains a high level of engagement with those who receive the content’.
With 46% of users sharing content via email, good old electronic mail ranks first and is followed by Facebook (33.32%).
To confirm the importance of content sharing for traffic purposes ShareThis invited a customer, publisher, US Weekly, to add something to its press release.
And this is what Daniel Mandell, Director of Business Development at US Weekly had to say: “sharing through email and social channels is driving more and more readers, and is an increasingly popular way to interact with our content. “