ShareThis, the company behind the ubiquitous sharing widgets of the same name, is rolling out a new way for publishers to see how their social sharing strategy stacks up — and it’s sharing a list of the top publishers in two categories.
ShareThis first announced its Social Quality Index back in November, and it’s going live for publishers next month. The SQI assigns each publisher a score between 1 and 10 based on how much their content is shared on social networks. Scores are assigned in 27 different categories, and multi-category publishers receive multiple scores. ShareThis looks at all the sharing data on any page with its widget, which means that sharing through things like the Facebook Share button are included too.
CEO Kurt Abrahamson says the score has real business value, because sites with socially engaging content also draw an audience that’s likely to engage with advertising. In fact, he says early tests show that ads running on sites with a high SQI have a clickthrough rate that’s 40 percent higher than average. That’s especially significant for some of the smaller sites that ShareThis works with — they should be able to tell advertisers that their audience may not be very big, but it’s valuable.
To offer a taste of the data that the SQI has uncovered, ShareThis is releasing this (unranked) list of the most social sites in travel and sports. It’s a mix of some predictable big names with some “huh?” moments — and it sounds like that’s exactly what ShareThis wants.
Travel
Sports
ShareThis is the largest market for sharing and influence across the web, reaching more than 400 million users across nearly 1 million sites. ShareThis makes content more engaging for publishers and marketing more impactful for brands by tapping into its true influence and value. Based in Palo Alto, CA with offices in New York and Cincinnati, the company is privately held with funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Blue Chip Venture Company, DFJ Mercury, Illinois Ventures, Matthew Pritzker Company, Queen...
Kurt Abrahamson is CEO of SocialMedia.com. Kurt has an accomplished history of growing and leading successful businesses and his experience working with the web’s leading publishers gives him the ability to understand the complex needs of media companies. Kurt came to SocialMedia.com from Google where he first served as Director of the Content Media Group, leading the global launch of Google AdSense. Kurt managed the direct sales channel for publishers and secured long-term deals with five of the top ten...
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