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BrightEdge, provider of an enterprise-class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter of the Web, said a first-of-its-kind, in-depth analysis of more than four million tweets shows pages that display Twitter share buttons get seven times the social media mentions than sites that do not.
According to BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu, this trend points to enormous social marketing opportunity that brands can implement immediately at almost no cost.
“We got this from an update to the monthly SocialShare reports we do,” Yu said in an interview. According to the September issue of the BrightEdge SocialShare Analysis, almost half of the largest 10,000 sites on the Web still do not display any kind of social sharing links or buttons at all.
The BrightEdge Social Share Analysis shows that 53.6 percent of the largest 10,000 sites on the Web display some social links or buttons on their front pages, up from 52.8 percent in late July.
“It’s clear that social sharing buttons can drive real social traffic that will inevitably drive sales, brand awareness or even affinity but it’s also clear that many brands are not taking advantage of this simple, cost free tool,” Yu said in a statement. “It’s surprising that with so much talk about social and clear consumer adoption, almost half of the Web’s largest sites don’t take advantage at all of free social sharing tools.”
“BrightEdge SocialShare Analysis makes it clear that social products, such as Twitter’s Tweet Button and Follow Buttons, can drive valuable returns for marketers who implement them across their sites,” said Ryan Sarver, director of Platform at Twitter, in a statement. “These are simple, free tools that can drive real ROI for any site.”
Yu said BrightEdge analyzed a large representative data stream of four million tweets that were selected at random. Using its new Social Share Engine cloud technology that parses messages to track how users share and interact with social buttons and links, BrightEdge was able to determine which tweets carried shared information and then it was able to track this shared data to determine if it was shared with tools and buttons, links or other methods.
The examination revealed that pages that display Twitter share buttons or links were distributed to followers on average about seven times more often than pages that did not have similar sharing tools, Yu said. This is a significant difference that could lead to exposure to millions of additional consumers for the sites that took the modest step of just installing social sharing buttons.
In the social adoption analysis this month, all of the leading social sites saw increases in usage compared to the previous month, but the two largest and most established social platforms have commanding leads in market share. Facebook plug-ins such as the Like button and links to fan pages are seen on homepages of more than 50 percent of the world’s largest sites. While buttons and links for Twitter are seen on 42.5 percent of the top 10,000 sites. Google+ continues to grow, but is still only used on about 8.5 percent of the largest 10,000 sites, according to BrightEdge.
The BrightEdge SocialShare Analysis examines and analyzes the homepages of the world’s top 10,000 sites. The analysis seeks to measure the presence of social plug-ins on these large Web properties and the presence of links to social pages. The monthly SocialShare Analysis provides a window into the growth and utilization of social tools by the world’s most popular brands.
The SocialShare analysis is powered by the BrightEdge SocialShare Engine. The Social Share Engine complements the BrightEdge SEO Platform, allowing marketers to see the impact of their social strategies on SEO and drive new value in campaigns and for consumers. Go to http://www.brightedge.com/social-share-September-2011 to view and download the full report.