With Facebook's Media Referral Traffic Up 170%, Site Announces 'Stories to Share' The social network has rolled out a feature that offers suggestions to media organizations about which articles they should post to their pages.
By Andrea Huspeni •
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Facebook's partnerships with media organizations seem to be paying off.
Today, the social network reported the average referral traffic from Facebook to media sites has increased more than 170 percent this year.
The company went into more detail claiming TIME saw traffic grow by 208 percent, referrals to listicle-loving BuzzFeed rose 855 percent and sports site Bleacher Report is up a whopping 1081 percent.
Facebook also noted the more media sites post, the more traffic will be driven to a site, claiming referrals jumped 80 percent when posting frequency increased.
But that doesn't mean businesses should go on a posting frenzy by providing updates every other minute, as this will be looked upon as spammy to your readers. Facebook states, "there's no magic number of how many more posts will impact referral traffic for all Facebook pages. Page administrators should test how increased posting impacts their referrals, Likes and overall engagement."
Related: Social Media Etiquette: 5 Questions to Ask Before Posting About the News
With these released findings, Facebook has decided to up its game with the media. The company is testing a feature called Stories to Share. The tool will allow the social network to suggest which articles organizations should post to their Facebook page. So, if there is a story on Entrepreneur that is hot but hasn't yet been posted on Facebook, the company will recommend we put it on our page.
All this focus on getting the media on board, has helped Facebook nab the No. 1 spot for referral traffic from social networks, according to digital tool company Shareaholic. According to the findings, Facebook accounted for more than 10 percent of traffic to media publications, up 58.8 percent from the same time last year.
Related: Where Social-Media Use is Growing the Most (Infographic)
While Facebook nabbing the No. 1 spot may not come as too much of a shock, it is interesting which social network came in second place: Pinterest. The wedding-loving, food-obsessed pin site managed to beat out Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit. In fact, with more than 3 percent of media referrals coming from Pinterest, it drives more traffic than those three sites combined.
Shareaholic's Social Media Traffic Report was based on 13 months of data collected from 200,000 publishers.
