Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter drives more traffic
New research by PRNewswire and Crowd Factory has found that 48% of press release sharing happens on Facebook, compared with 37% on Twitter and 15% of LinkedIn, despite sharing on Twitter driving 30% more views than Facebook.
PR Newswire, which uses Crowd Factory to enable and measure social sharing of client press releases, looked at tens of thousands of press releases, month over month, to analyse where, when and how news releases were shared.
The research found that found that each ‘share’ generates an average of nearly two click-backs to the original press release, with sharing of press releases across social networks increasing the total audience of the content by nearly 70%.
It was also found that multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases, with releases containing all three receiving 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.
Ken Dowell, executive vice president of PR Newswire, said: "We have known for some time that Twitter was more heavily used for news and business purposes, and the numbers confirm that Twitter takes the lead for driving traffic back to press releases.
"This data reiterates the importance of creating interesting content that people will want to share, whether that means pairing your release with a photo or video or simply creating a more tweetable headline. Given that a single share can drive two new people back to your press release, optimizing content for sharing can easily amplify the impact of your investment in news distribution."