Facebook Dominates Social Referrals; Pinterest Grows Exponentially

Social Media

October 15, 2013 -- Content discovery and sharing company Shareaholic tracked eight social media platforms to see how they were driving traffic to publishers' websites.

Examining 13 months of data collected from 200,000 publishers using Shareaholic's browser, blogger, and website tools, and reaching more than 250 million unique monthly visitors, the Social Media Traffic Report shows:
 

• As of September 2013, Facebook accounted for more than 10% of social site traffic to the publishers studied -- driving more traffic than the other 7 social media platforms combined.

• Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are the dominant traffic-referring platforms; each has grown more than 50% in share of overall visits in the past year. Pinterest grew 66.52%, Facebook 58.81%, and Twitter by 54.12%.
   

• Interestingly, Pinterest, having grown by 66.52% to 3.68%, now drives more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ combined.

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Source: Shopaholic, October 2013

• StumbleUpon and Reddit showed double-digit declines in driving traffic to publishers' sites the past year, -27.47% and -35.16%, respectively.

• YouTube and LinkedIn have gained momentum; their share of driving overall traffic to publishers increased 52.86% and 34.51%, respectively.

• The numbers shows Google+ isn’t yet competitive. The company suggests "it probably shouldn’t be a top priority for digital marketers, but — of course — that can change at any moment."

Source: Shopaholic, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube referrals up 52%+ in past year [REPORT], October 15, 2013.