Last Monday Derek Thompson (senior editor at The Atlantic) missed a wonderful opportunity to talk about one of the things that makes Twitter truly great.
Let me give you some context.
Less than three weeks after deleting the Twitter app from his phone (part of a slew of 2015 resolutions revolving around better productivity), Derek redownloaded the app. Eventually he discovered a new feature: “View Tweet Activity.”
This got him exploring, asking questions, and digging deeper into analytics only to discover what I thought was a common truth: Twitter drives very little traffic to your articles.
Thompson writes, “Alas, my most popular tweets averaged a click-through rate of about 1.7 percent.” For reference, he notes a digital display ad in East Asia gets about the same rate. He concluded, “my prodigious use of Twitter in the last 30 days has cumulatively driven less traffic to TheAtlantic.com than one of my below-average stories.”
That discovery is related to another bit of conventional wisdom, the dirty little secret of our social sharing economy: people don’t actually read what they share.
Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, a company that monitors web analytics on giant sites like Upworthy, confirmed as much last year when he tweeted:
We’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading.
Fortunately, Thompson didn’t declare Twitter dead or worthless.
Instead, he walked away with a different conclusion: “Twitter is sending less than 2 percent of its overall engagement back to the web.” Which he then closes with this statement: “99 percent of my work on Twitter belongs to Twitter.”
This is not a bad discovery to make. It’s called digital sharecropping. A concept he demonstrates he clearly understood when he writes, “Apps don’t pay my rent. A website does.”
So why share your articles on Twitter? Simple: for the social proof.
If you look at the feeds of top-shelf influencers you’ll see a prodigious flow of articles. If they genuinely read each one, vetted it, and shared it, they would be professional readers.
But that’s not what they get paid to do.
And fair enough: you blew through the one-thousand word article in less than four seconds. That may be reading. But it’s certainly not comprehension. But do we really care in the age of skimming?
The number one benefit in all this sharing is the on-page endorsement. Look at this:
Think of those 1,388 shares as votes for this article.
Listen. We all look at the number of shares before we read an article. It’s a heuristic that helps us decide what to read — and not to read.
As social proof, those numbers are so important some people argue you should remove social share buttons — particularly in a conversion context — until you get a significant number.
Which is curious why The Atlantic and Business Insider display the buttons, but not the numbers. Instead, they rest on other heuristics like comments.
Is this because the shares are low? If so, there’s another approach. Sites like TechCrunch simply roll all the shares into one number:
These votes employ the user and wisdom of the crowd variety of social proof, not to mention a high share count plays into people’s fear of missing out.
So more Twitter shares — even if they don’t send substantial traffic — means a better chance someone will actually read your article.
And in the battle for consumer attention, every advantage counts. And let’s not forget one final benefit behind using Twitter: chances of getting your tweets indexed by Google.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
wonderful points altogether, you just gained a new reader.
What might you recommend about your publish that you made some days in the past?
Any sure?
Awesome article! I can’t agree more with the social proof. A great way to show how popular the article is.
Oh yes, people don’t always read what they share. Well said!
Cheers 🙂
I look forward to sharing this article.
What about the people that understand the numbers. That shares don’t correlate with people actually reading? Where is the social proof if I know that 99% of the shares came from people that didn’t bother to read the article themselves?
I had that discussion with Ryan Hanley awhile back. If an article is promoted (shared) by someone who doesn’t think its valuable enough to read, then why should I read it?
Knowing that social share numbers are being gamed destroys any credibility in the “social proof”.
Call me a cynic, but I don’t even look at the numbers to decide what to read. I don’t care how many, or how few, times your articles get shared, I’m going to read them. Opposite is true for those click-bait headlines used by BuzzFeed and Upworthy. I don’t care how many people Ooh and aah, I’m not wasting my time. Okay, sometimes. If it’s a REALLY catchy headline.
I will happily share this article, having read and gained value from it.
Always a pleasure, Mr. Farnworth.
I know where you are coming from Scott. Perhaps I should have put more emphasis on the fact that it’s not the only shortcut we use to decide what we read. It’s one among many. And as those cues add up (mind you, in a very short period of time), then will we read it. I don’t read anything based upon social shares alone.
Never forget, you are not your audience.
Yep, I notice the social shares on websites and how many fans on Facebook, etc. It gives me a sense of the writer’s popularity. Not that an unknown writer can’t produce great stuff, but people usually flock to the good stuff.
Hmm. Personally, I don’t share articles unless I’ve read them, found them interesting and/or useful, and think the info will help someone else. I really don’t pay attention to the number of shares an article received before I read it. If the topic is something I’m interested in, I read it; if not, I don’t.
Social share count is immaterial compared to quality of content, IMHO, especially knowing that the share count doesn’t really accurately reflect the usefulness of the content.
Although, I do agree that, for the purpose of getting others to share it, it does help to show share counts on them.
Beckie, to confirm what you are saying, I’ve seen a number of the most popular posts lists go around and usually the metric is the number of shares … but once you click through and read the article you realize the quality is not there. Or there are clearly better writers, just not getting the same attention.
Hmmm, so you mean to say that all the blood, sweat, and tears this very non-tech savvy woman (namely me) has poured into getting her social share buttons on her website are all for naught? As you said, there are clearly better writers, just not getting the same attention. : ) BTW, I think dancing books that suck up dirt are pretty darn nifty myself.
Well, we all have to start somewhere, and for most of us that means the bottom. The encouraging thing to know is you can climb out of that hole. Anyone can.