According to information recently released by the website Upworthy.com, people who don’t read full articles end up sharing more than those that read the entire thing. They began tracking data based on how much time each person spent on a given article, rather than on their site as a whole. With that information, they began measuring how much of an article people were reading before they shared.
The numbers were broken down into percentages of the average time it would take to read the full article. For the best chance at getting something shared, people needed to stay on the page for 125% of the time it takes to read the full article. This makes sense as people who read the full article, then reread parts of it or watch an associated video, are most likely to share because they were obviously interested. Nearly 10% of people who spend this extra time on a page will end up sharing it.
Below that, however, the next most likely group to share are those who spent about 25% of the time it takes to read the full post. Basically, people who read the headline, any bullet points or bolded areas are going to share at a rate of about 8%. This is an interesting statistic for marketers, and shows just how important it is to properly format articles to improve the chances that they get shared.
Interestingly, the lowest share rates occur between 75 and 100% of the time it takes to read the post. If people read the entire post, they only share about 6% of the time. Those in the 75% range make sense, as they gave up before reading the entire article; they aren’t likely going to want to share it. Those who read the whole thing, however, most would have expected them to share at a greater rate. The statistics from this information however show that this is not the case.
Marketers would be wise to track when their specific visitors are most likely to share the content, as this is a major source of traffic, and also helps improve search rankings. There are many times when simple changes to the formatting of the article can help improve the chances of a post getting shared. Taking the time to track this type of thing can have a dramatic affect on the amount of traffic you’re able to bring into your site.
