The Top 1% Of Content Drives How Much of Your Total Social Traffic?!

You’ll Be Shocked at The Answer.

We’re not exactly breaking news when we tell you that social media, especially Facebook, is increasingly becoming one of the most important distribution channels for your content. But when you learn that the top 1% of content is driving 85% of all social referrals, well … we won’t blame you if you’re surprised.

The Top 1% Has All the Power

Last year, we wrote for the first time about an interesting trend we were seeing across the SimpleReach network: the majority of social traffic was coming from a small percentage of content. In Q1 of 2013, the top 1% of content drove 65.2% of Facebook referrals. By Q3 of last year, it was 71.5%. Now, at the end of Q1 2014, that number’s increased ~20 percentage points to 85.19%.

The changes in Facebook’s algorithm have made two points more important than ever for content:

1. Produce a large volume of content to have a chance at hitting the 1%.

2. Great content isn’t enough, you’ll never hit the 1% without a distribution strategy that identifies and amplifies your winners.

How these numbers affect your specific business are obviously going to vary, we imagine there are a lot of interesting conversations about production vs distribution going on in agencies and newsrooms on all sides of the game.

About the author:

Adam Orshan is a mild-mannered Product Marketing Manager at SimpleReach that tends to make somewhat obscure references.