Mobile
Is Anyone Using Social Sharing Buttons On Mobile?

Is Anyone Using Social Sharing Buttons On Mobile?

March 31, 2016
2 min read

Visit a lot of mobile websites and you’ll see precious screen space dedicated to social sharing buttons, imploring users to share the content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social networks.

At first this seems like a good design choice: social media usage on mobile is huge. Pinterest relies on mobile browsers for 64% of its referred traffic. And over half a billion people access Facebook solely through mobile – a 78% year-over-year increase. Overall, sixty percent of the time consumers spend on social media is on mobile.

But how often are these mobile social media users pinning, tweeting, liking and sharing from the share buttons on mobile sites?

Social Sharing on Mobile

The first question we asked was: on average, how many mobile site users do any kind of social sharing, via any social platform?

Across the over 61 million mobile sessions we studied, we found that only 0.2% of mobile users do any social sharing.

This is very, very low usage: Mobile users actually are 11.5 times more likely to tap an advertisement than they are to tap on a social sharing button.

This engagement is also much lower than what we saw in desktop sessions. For a subset of sites we analyzed, we found that people were 35% less likely to tap on a sharing button when they accessed a site via mobile versus via desktop.

On Mobile, Pinterest Eclipses Twitter but Facebook is King

Of the mobile users who did share site content via social share buttons, on which social media platforms were they doing the most sharing?

Although the number of users who click on social sharing buttons is small compared to desktop, we did track tens of thousands of mobile social shares. In our analysis, we focused on the three major social media platforms that were most common across all sites: Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Mobile users are over twice as likely to share via Facebook as via Pinterest, using social sharing buttons. And mobile visitors are three times as likely to share via Facebook as via Twitter. There were also more visitors coming from Facebook and Pinterest than from Twitter.

Overall, 1.32% of users came from Facebook, compared to 0.16% from Pinterest and just 0.04% from Twitter. That’s 33 times more traffic from Facebook than Twitter. And Pinterest traffic was 4 times bigger than Twitter in our sample of mobile sessions.

The Login Tango

Just because sharing buttons have been popular on the desktop web does not mean they can be ported over with the same experience on the mobile web. And while 0.2% of mobile users clicking on a social sharing button is a minuscule figure, it does reflect the way social media usage on mobile has evolved: away from the web and toward apps.

Most mobile users access social networks via an app, so they are often not logged in to the corresponding social networks on the mobile web. Pinterest, for example, gets 75% of its traffic from apps.

The heart of the sharing problem is that users must be logged in in order to share. If you’re not logged in, sharing can be kind of a nightmare.

For starters you have to thumb type your username and password. If you’ve been saving your password in-app or in-browser, you might have forgotten it. Resetting a lost password is a huge hassle on mobile.

So it’s not surprising that mobile users are nearly 12 times more likely to click on an advertisement then they are on a social sharing button.

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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