Generating shares with your content is important. It's not the most important element - getting people to read your content or take further action is likely your wider aim - but shares play a crucial part in the process, and provide an indicator of what's resonating with your audience.
In this context, it's important to know which platforms are generating the most social shares so you have some idea of overall trends and audience behaviors. And while it's more important to track and understand your own, specific audience's preferences, by looking at the bigger picture you can get a sense of how your share counts are tracking - for example, whether you're seeing dips because of wider behavioral shifts as opposed to problems with your own strategic approach.
And this latest research from Fractl and BuzzSumo provides some really great insights on sharing trends. Looking at the million most shared posts across the major social platforms over the first half of 2016, the research team have uncovered some important notes, including.
- Facebook has increased its domination of social shares, rising from 81.9% of the total shares of the top million posts in 2014 (when the same study was last conducted) to 90.2% today. Twitter shares have decreased 29% in the same period.
- Upworthy averages the most social shares of any publisher, though it's seen a significant drop in average shares per post since 2014 - down from 60k shares on average to 15k
- Positive articles generate significantly more shares, though Facebook is the most divisive network
The full results are available on Fractl's website, but below is a breakdown of the key findings in infographic form. Some interesting and valuable insights on overall sharing trends.