Social media is very much about sharing – unfortunately, often things that we don’t really want to know! Sandwich choice for example. It’s always handy to know what type of content people do like to share on social, as it can help us to mould our output from a marketing and communications perspective. An ipsos survey from April this year asked people in the UK what type of content they tend to share – you can see the results below…

• Pictures – 36%
• Links to articles – 22%
• Links to other websites – 18%
• Reposts from other people’s social media accounts (RTs etc) – 18%
• Something they like or recommend (perhaps a product, service, movie etc) – 15%
• News items – 14%
• Videos – 11%
• Not shared any content in the past month – 46%

Please note that these figures are a % of respondents and they were asked what their sharing activity was in the past month. Source used – emarketer.com

Golden nuggets…

Mmmmmmm nuggets. Sorry. Well, I don’t think the high pictures percentage is a shock! Imagery is key to the world of social media and is vital in order to encourage sharing. The 11% for video surprised me a little – I thought it would be higher, but something important to remember is that video isn’t the most accessible form of content for many, especially when they are using social via a mobile and on the move. Remember not to rely on video. The reposting stat is high, and goes to show that while it can be easy to overestimate the influence of a brand etc on social, it’s the influence of people’s peers and ‘friends’ that is still key! The survey concluded that 46% of people had not shared anything in the past month – a sign that a large chunk of people are not inclined to share any content. They just use text to tell us about their sandwich choice…

Photo credit (used under CC) – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyhunter/

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