Rumble, a mobile publishing platform, recently released a study that looked at how users shared articles. What they found was that email is still the preferred method of sharing articles in comparison to Twitter and Facebook.
Rumble’s Q1 2014 engagement study included over 100,000 users on several publisher clients. They discovered that users shared 76 percent of all articles through email. The remaining 24 percent was split equally between both Facebook and Twitter.
“A suggestion to publishers is to also use the e-mail sharing feature to drive stronger acquisition of mobile users. By including ‘Download our mobile app’ in the e-mail template for e-mail shares, a publisher can create an effective touch-point for a potential user to download their app,” the study states.
The study also noted that 80 percent of the viewing impressions came from the publisher’s Front Page. Only 10 percent of viewed articles were National News, and the remaining 10 percent comprised Local/Regional News, Op-Ed, Arts/Culture, Video, Sports, and the like.
According to the study, article popularity does not always correlate with the amount of shares an article has. Even though Front Page articles in the study had 80 percent of the views, those articles had a below average share rate. National News, Op-Ed, and Video content had the highest article share rates. Sports, Local Info, Reviews, and Business articles had the lowest share rates.
“As publishers define their mobile content strategy, it may be tempting to invest heavily on Front Page content, however niche content may be an even more effective way to boost ASR and grow their audience base,” the study says. “[…]The data findings are a clear indication that content popularity does not have a strong correlation to the ASR.”
Source:
“Mobile Content Engagement Study.” 2014. Rumble.me
“Study: Email Outperforms Facebook, Twitter for Content Sharing.” 2014. Socialtimes.com
“New Rumble Study Gives Publishers Mobile Content Engagement Benchmarks.” 2014. www.news9.com
