The 20 most-viewed press releases on Business Wire in 2011

Among these releases, here are some facts and figures:

• Cumulatively, these 20 releases account for 1,216,513 views, or an average of 63,076 views per release.
• 15 of 20 included their company logo; seven included at least one photo, and one included a video.
• On average, 59 percent of readers found the release directly on BusinessWire.com (while browsing headlines or via RSS feeds or headline delivery emails); 34 percent found it on another site, and 6 percent found it via a search engine. Less than 1 percent of traffic, on average, came via social sources.
• Links are a key factor in engaging readers with your news. Thirteen of the 20 releases included at least one hyperlink in the body of the release; those 13 releases got an average of 7,798 link clicks.
• Don’t underestimate social, especially the top sites. For the traffic that did arrive from social sources, 65 percent came from Facebook, 29 percent from Twitter, 5 percent from LinkedIn, and the remaining 1 percent from all other social networks.
• In terms of user engagement and sharing, readers on average shared each release on Facebook 147 times, on Twitter 103 times, and on LinkedIn 88 times.
• Business Wire readers are very interested in news about Apple and ExxonMobil.