What A Social Share Is Worth To Retailers On Different Social Networks

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VALUE OF SHARING: Retailers want consumers to share links with images of their merchandise on social networks to increase the visibility of their products and increase the volume of sales. They do this by placing share buttons on their website's product pages, which allows consumers to share those items with their friends on various social networks. However, the value of those shares varies depending on the social network.

• On Google+, the value of a share is slightly more than $5 (more than any other social network). This is likely because content shared on Google+ also ranks high in Google search results, which increases the likelihood that someone with intent to buy will see that content.
• Facebook shares ranked second, with a value of $3.58, followed by a Facebook Like, which is worth about $1.41.
• When someone shares a merchant's content on Pinterest or Twitter, that's worth about $0.87 and $0.85, respectively.
• Email is still the most valuable channel to retailers. When a consumer emails a product (sometimes accompanied with an offer) to someone they know, that's worth slightly more than $12.

To calculate this data, AddShoppers considered a number of variables that led to a social media-influenced sale, such as the percent of social media shares that occurs on each social network, click-through rates, conversion rates, and average order value. Each dollar amount is based on the average revenue generated by each social share on a given network. AddShoppers analyzed data from 212 million unique shoppers in 2013 who shopped on more than 10,000 merchant websites. (AddShoppers)

FACEBOOK ALGO CHANGE: Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm in order to show fewer text-based status updates from Pages, but more text-based status updates from friends. In a blog post announcing the change, Facebook said that simple, text-based status updates from friends perform much better than those from Pages. Last month, Facebook made a change to the News Feed algorithm that placed more weight on posts that contained more media content, such as photos, videos, and links. It seems that Facebook is ushering brands to share more rich media content on the social network with these two changes. (Facebook Blog)

WELCOME, INSIDERS: The Social Insights newsletter is now Social Insider, a reflection of our increasing emphasis on the day's most important topics in social media, as well as news exclusives of interest to industry insiders. We look forward to the newsletter becoming an even more important part of your morning routine.

TWITTER SELLS DIVERSITY: Twitter is reportedly sharing information about the demographics of its users with ad agencies. Twitter is more ethnically diverse than rival social networks; black, Hispanic, and Asian-American users account for 41% of Twitter's audience in the U.S., compared to 34% of the users on Facebook. Twitter is sharing insights about how different ethnic groups use Twitter, such as that Hispanic users tweet more often than other users. Revealing this information will help Twitter attract advertisers that want to target specific ethnic groups. (Wall Street Journal)

PINTEREST REVENUE PLAN IN 2014: Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann says his goal is for the company to begin earning revenue this year. "We have [revenue] goals. They're projected," he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. Silbermann also said that he's reached out to Dick Costolo (CEO of Twitter), Jack Dorsey (CEO of Square), Aaron Levie (CEO of Box), and other execs in Silicon Valley for advice on transitioning the company from a large startup to a long-term viable business. (Wall Street Journal)

TUMBLR'S USER TRAFFIC PLATEAUS: Tumblr's Web traffic plateaued in May of last year, according to various data sources. comScore reports that Tumblr's U.S. traffic has floated around 47 million unique visitors each month (although that doesn't account for a significant portion of mobile usage), while GlobalWebIndex says the number of global Internet users who are active on Tumblr has remained steady at around 4%. One theory as to why Tumblr's user growth has come to a halt is that there is more competition among Web properties that focus on visual memes (e.g. GIFs), such as Buzzfeed and Upworthy. (Forbes)

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