Which social network drives the most traffic?

Survey shows the potential for Pinterest to drive traffic

December 2013 update

Social sign-in and sharing tool Gigya have released their latest social sharing report showing which could be helpful if you're asked that general question - which social network should we focus on?

The new infographic shows the dominance of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest with Google+ surprisingly limited across consumer sites. It also has specific data on sharing for Ecommerce and publishing sites. Pinterest is even more popular on Ecommerce sites. They have also released a regional breakdown for the first time we think.

We know that social sharing is having an increasing impact on traffic and sales, but which social sharing channels have the biggest impact? Demographic information  on social media is becoming more accessible now through sites including socialbaker, and at Smart Insights we share demographic information with our readers as we find new search.

Insights from Yieldbot showing CTR on social networks

Recently the publishing ad serving company Yieldbot reviewed its data to assess the impact of social referral traffic and advertising performance of media sites focused on female audiences in verticals including food and recipe, home and garden, style, health and well being.

With access to over 1.5bn views per month from their publisher analytics platform, Yieldbot analysed womens engagement with social media.

Key highlights included:

• Highest traffic volume from Pinterest though visitors don’t click on ads on the publisher sites at the same rate as Facebook referrals.
• Pinterest drives higher volume of ad clicks than Facebook, but less CTRs.
• Higher volume for referral traffic from Pinterest but more CTRS from Facebook.
• Facebook has better referrals through mobile than Pinterest.

The table shows that Pinterest has a significantly higher volume of monthly page views, referring traffic to female-oriented sites.

When looking at CTRs on ads from the referrer, Facebook outperforms.

More insights on sharing popularity through social media

So across all sectors, Facebook and Twitter are significantly higher than Pinterest.

The final data source on the top networks is from social management tool SimpleReach who shared the top social networks driving traffic in 2014 which is recommended by Facebook in their post which recommends increasing post frequency on Facebook.

In a related post, we shared an Infographic on the impact of Social media on Ecommerce.

For the latest statistics in one place, see our Online Marketing Statistics compilation which summarises different sources of buyer behaviour across platforms.

If you've read this post and think, driving traffic is fine, but what drives sales? Good point! You have to turn to attribution to review which marketing channels drive sales?