{"id":531,"date":"2021-05-18T09:55:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T09:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/?p=531"},"modified":"2021-06-03T10:01:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T10:01:25","slug":"social-media-is-driving-traffic-to-news-websites-and-one-source-dwarfs-all-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/social-media-is-driving-traffic-to-news-websites-and-one-source-dwarfs-all-others\/","title":{"rendered":"4 insights into social media traffic from our Social Media Index"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As publishers\u2019 social media strategies broaden to incorporate more platforms, understanding the dynamic patterns of social media usage is key to maximising social media traffic: which platforms are more effective? When? And which way are the numbers trending? Having a firm idea of patterns in social media referral traffic can generate important insights that can guide a social media strategy in the long term.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to improve publishers\u2019 access to this important data, Echobox has developed the world\u2019s first <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/showcase.echobox.com\/smi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media Index<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, showing how much traffic the online publishing industry receives from social media every single day.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using unique data from the Social Media Index, we show that:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Facebook remains the dominant source of social traffic, although many publishers will be <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/publishers-social-media-2021-trends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">focusing on Instagram in 2021<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\r\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Social Media Index also shows that Tuesdays are the best days for Twitter, whereas Facebook\u2019s share of total traffic reaches its peak on Saturdays.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\r\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moreover, after a huge increase in social media traffic during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, traffic levels have declined to roughly pre-pandemic levels.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\r\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Facebook is often an important source of traffic in the days after major events such as elections or large-scale terrorist attacks.<\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2><strong>1) Facebook is the dominant source of social media traffic<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/the-publishers-ultimate-guide-to-resharing-on-facebook\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Facebook remains key to generating traffic<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from social media to online publishers and news websites. Last year, over 13% of news publishers\u2019 traffic came from Facebook, an improvement from 2019\u2019s 11%. For the summer, this figure rose to an average of around 13.7% of all traffic to news websites, meaning that nearly one in seven pageviews accrued by news publishers came from a single source.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remarkably, Facebook\u2019s traffic share was ten times higher than Twitter\u2019s and accounted for around 90% of all social media traffic. The Social Media Index clearly shows this dominance: the vast grey area in the Social Media Index chart represents Facebook-generated traffic; Twitter is the sliver of red at the top.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_2229\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2229\" style=\"width: 1323px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-2229 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1323\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1.png 1323w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1-300x174.png 300w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1-887x515.png 887w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1-150x87.png 150w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-1-768x446.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1323px) 100vw, 1323px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2229\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/showcase.echobox.com\/smi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media Index<\/a> shows that Facebook (grey) dwarfs Twitter (red) as a traffic source for news publishers\u2019 websites.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other social networks \u2014 LinkedIn, Reddit and Pinterest \u2014 hardly send any traffic to news publishers at all. Snapchat, on the other hand, generates so little traffic that we decided not to feature it at all in the Social Media Index.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the end of last year, Echobox conducted a <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/publishers-social-media-2021-trends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">survey of publishers<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> across different continents and multiple content verticals. Interestingly, many publishers (around 70%) have indicated that <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/when-is-the-best-time-to-post-on-instagram-for-publishers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Instagram<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will be of increased importance to them in 2021. Yet the Social Media Index indicates that Instagram, as a percentage of referral traffic, is growing only incrementally after having dropped from its 2018-2019 peak when the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle produced an Instagram record of 0.65% of all traffic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As we note in sections 3 and 4, the percentage of traffic coming from Facebook and Twitter has plateaued in recent years, with the early months of the global COVID-19 pandemic being a significant caveat. Accordingly, <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/instagram-vs-facebook\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the greater focus<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on Instagram may be an indication that publishers see not only the potential for significant growth on platforms other than Facebook and Twitter, but also, beyond traffic, the ability to gain access to a younger demographic and build brand loyalty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<h2><strong>2) When it comes to generating social media traffic, weekends are the best for Facebook and Tuesdays for Twitter.<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One trend that is easy to spot is that there are recurring spikes in Facebook\u2019s traffic share that are as regular as clockwork. Whilst <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/when-is-the-best-time-to-post-on-facebook-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the best <i>time<\/i> to post on Facebook<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will vary with each publisher, week after week, Saturday and Sunday are the days on which Facebook referrals peak, with weekend traffic 6% higher than the weekly average. Twitter usage remains relatively stable throughout the week, but there is a discernible peak on Tuesdays and a trough on Sundays.\u00a0<\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_2230\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2230\" style=\"width: 1201px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-2230 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1201\" height=\"718\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1.png 1201w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1-300x179.png 300w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1-861x515.png 861w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1-150x90.png 150w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Shareoftrafficgenerated-1-768x459.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1201px) 100vw, 1201px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2230\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Facebook (grey) is most important as a traffic source on Saturdays. For Twitter (pink), it\u2019s Tuesdays.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2><strong>3 ) Aside from a steep rise during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook has plateaued as a source of traffic since 2019.<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The middle of 2018 saw the second lowest level of referral traffic from Facebook since the Social Media Index began collecting data in 2014, with July 2018 recording an astounding low of 7%. This steadily increased to a recent high of 16% on Christmas day 2019, but aside from another short lived peak in the summer of 2020, levels have plateaued at around 13% on average.\u00a0<\/span> <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2231\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1345\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2.png 1345w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2-300x178.png 300w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2-866x515.png 866w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2-150x89.png 150w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-2-768x457.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1345px) 100vw, 1345px\" \/> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twitter usage has tended to be more stable as a source of traffic, albeit at a far lower level than Facebook. Since the middle of 2015, Twitter has remained in a range between around 1.5% to 1%. This said, Twitter referrals have trended downwards since the second half of 2020 with an average of just 1.07% in December 2020.<\/span> <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2232\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1335\" height=\"777\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3.png 1335w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3-300x175.png 300w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3-885x515.png 885w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3-150x87.png 150w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/SMI-3-768x447.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1335px) 100vw, 1335px\" \/> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A similar decline in Facebook traffic can be discerned around the same time indicating that this may be a seasonal variation with less time spent on social media during the Christmas holidays and a concurrent slowdown in the newscycle. However, as previously mentioned, 2019\u2019s peak day for Facebook referral traffic was December 25th.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<h2><strong>4) When major news breaks, Facebook traffic falls.<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The days following US election day in 2020 (November 4th to November 6th) were the worst days in the year for Facebook, in terms of its relative importance as a traffic source for news publishers. From a yearly average of 13.01% of all traffic to news sites, these 3 days produced a drop to an average of 9.58%. Twitter, by contrast, saw virtually no change against the yearly average, in fact, producing a small bump (1.25% against a yearly average of 1.22%).<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The week of the election followed the general trend outlined earlier &#8211; peaks on the weekend, and a trough in the middle of the week. This time, though, the trough occurring the day after the election was deeper than usual, with November 4th Facebook\u2019s worst day of the year as more people turned to other news sources and\/or accessed news websites directly or through other channels. Twitter\u2019s share in traffic was indistinguishable from a normal week.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_2234\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2234\" style=\"width: 1328px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-2234 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1328\" height=\"794\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1.png 1328w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1-300x179.png 300w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1-861x515.png 861w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1-150x90.png 150w, https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Screenshot-2021-05-10-17.20.57-1-768x459.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1328px) 100vw, 1328px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2234\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Share of traffic news websites received from Facebook (grey) and Twitter (red). The day after Election Day was Facebook\u2019s worst in November as more people turned to other news sources and\/or accessed news websites directly or through other channels. Twitter\u2019s share of traffic was indistinguishable from a normal week.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This points towards a broader trend: When zooming in on days with particularly noteworthy events, such as major terrorist attacks or elections, you will often find that Facebook does not play an outsized role in generating traffic, perhaps surprisingly. Indeed the day of the US election in 2016 saw the lowest level of social media traffic from Facebook in that entire month.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been sizeable for publishers around the globe. In 2020, <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/what-does-post-pandemic-social-media-look-like-an-analysis-of-audience-trends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Echobox collaborated<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on a study with the analytics company Chartbeat to gain an in-depth insight into the underlying trends during this unprecedented time. <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/publishers-and-the-pandemic-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">After a significant increase in social media traffic<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in March of 2020 and a short-lived spike 3 months later in June, the share of referral traffic produced by social media declined to around pre-pandemic levels &#8211; a trend which has continued into 2021.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One thing to note from this period is that of the publishers who saw an increase in their social media traffic, the use of artificial intelligence made a substantial impact on just how great this uplift was. Compared to those who used a manual approach, AI-driven social media publishing produced <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/publishers-and-the-pandemic-part-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">double the increase in social referral traffic<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. These results confirm <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/which-social-media-management-platform-drives-the-most-traffic-for-publishers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">previous findings<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about the advantages of utilising AI as part of a publisher\u2019s social media strategy. Echobox\u2019s cutting-edge technology allows publishers to optimise and automate their social media workflow in posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram &#8211; the last of which, as we have noted, will be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/trends-to-know-for-social-media-editors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increasingly important for many in 2021<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However 2021\u2019s social media trends develop, Echobox will be an indispensable tool.<\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Editor\u2019s note: This is an update of an article originally published in April 2017.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\r\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You might also be interested in:<\/span><\/i><i> <\/i><\/p>\r\n<div class=\"vlp-link-container vlp-template-default wp-block-visual-link-preview-link\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/white-papers\/the-publishers-ultimate-guide-to-resharing-on-facebook\/\" class=\"vlp-link\" title=\"The publisher&#039;s ultimate guide to resharing on Facebook\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a>\t\t<div class=\"vlp-link-image-container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"vlp-link-image\">\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Echobox-Resources-The-publishers-ultimate-guide-to-resharing-on-Facebook.pdf-370x245.png\" style=\"max-width: 150px; max-height: 150px\" \/>\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"vlp-link-text-container\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"vlp-link-title\">\n\t\t\tThe publisher&#8217;s ultimate guide to resharing on Facebook\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"vlp-link-summary\">\n\t\t\tReady to build an effective reposting strategy? We break it down into 4 steps and tell you everything you need to know. 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When? And which way are the numbers trending? Having a firm idea of patterns in social media referral traffic can generate important insights that can<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[8],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>4 insights into social media traffic from our Social Media Index - Echobox Resources<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Using unique data from the Social Media Index, we show that Facebook remains the dominant source of social media traffic, even as its share of total referrals is declining.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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