Press Releases Shared More On Facebook, But Twitter Drives More Traffic

Press releases might not be the most exciting things on the net, but they're gaining new momentum when combined with social media. A new study from PR Newswire and Crowd Factory shows that Twitter - while not the network that most PR folks turn to - drives the most engagement of all social networks. The old style of sending a press release to a wire service and leaving the rest up to fate is quickly transitioning into the world of social media. More often, marketers and communications people are sending their press releases through the social pipeline - turning to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others to share their message. The study from PR Newswire examined tens of thousands of press releases over the course of several months. Facebook is the number one network that PR folks choose to share their press releases on, but it might not be the best. 48 percent of sharing occurs on Facebook, while 37 percent occurs on Twitter (and 15 percent on LinkedIn). However, despite the fact that more marketers seem to prefer Facebook, they might not have all the facts when they choose to turn to the big network on the block. Despite the fact that Facebook has Twitter beat when it comes to the number of users (and thus potential eyeballs and shares for each press release), each share on Twitter drives about 30 percent more press release views than a share on Facebook. Ken Dowell, executive vice president of PR Newswire, explains the press release Twitter phenomenon: "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." Here are some other key takeaways from this study: Each time a press release is shared, it generates 2 new clickbacks to the original release Sharing a press release via social media expands the total audience by 70 percent Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases (Image courtesy of Kosta Kostov via Shutterstock)

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Press Releases Shared More On Facebook, But Twitter Drives More Traffic

Lauren Dugan

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Lauren Dugan