Monday, September 4, 2017

buttons - Social media sharing: Does simply showing icons stimulate action?


This is tangentially related to the question "Social Media Icons - show all visible, or group under 'share'?".


In my organization, we've generally found that displaying the individual icons for Facebook, Twitter, etc. leads to better sharing results on those platforms than showing an "all-in-one" share button...


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However, I've also heard the argument that having these icons visible on one's content "reminds" visitors to share on those services (and, thus, increases the overall number of "shares") even if the user doesn't actual sharing service that you've provided. Said another way, the theory goes that because the user saw the Facebook or Twitter icon, they are more likely to independently share the content.


Our (somewhat limited) testing seems to bear this out, but are there accepted research findings or A/B test reports that support this hypothesis?



Answer



Interesting question, so I've gone digging for some research on this.



This study indicates that more than one sharing button does improve click-through rate (CTR) when included in EMail messages (although it is referring to a single specific sharing button (i.e. Twitter) rather than a generic 'Share This' button).


enter image description here


A lot of my initial searching seems to point to this one piece of research, but if I find anything else I'll update this post.


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