The Half-Life Of A Tweet

by Clay McDaniel , October 5, 2009

The power of social media marketing is that it is immediate and direct, allowing brands to engage customers in a real-time dialogue, but it's important to beware of the short window during which your message remains relevant (an hour, a day, a week) in each of the social media channels such as blogs, Twitter, and social networks.

Think of message relevance in terms of "half-life" and durability. The half-life of a social media message is the time it takes for the message to begin losing relevance. The durability of a message is how long it takes for it to fade completely from view. If you give this concept careful consideration, you can create the right messages for the right audiences based on your predictions of how long the messages will last in each channel. Match the social media message and its expected duration to the appropriate online channel, and over time, your audiences will come to expect different types of communications from your brand on each channel.

Twitter: Hours

At one end of the message durability spectrum is Twitter. The average Twitter message half-life is about four to six hours, with average durability of less than a day. On rare occasions, if the message value is high enough for strong community pass-along (i.e. re-tweeting and "via @___'s"), you might see durability extended by an additional 6 to 12 hours. Twitter is a great channel for immediate, fast-action messaging and nearly real-time customer support.

Facebook: Days

Next on the durability spectrum is Facebook. Branded Fan Page Wall posts appear to have an average half-life of one to three days, with durability of three to seven days. Fan Page updates (which function like direct messages to fans via their Facebook inboxes) have a shorter half-life, but a longer durability than Wall and Discussion Board posts.

Why? Because even if initially ignored, Fan Page update messages persist in the user's Facebook inbox until either manually deleted or pushed sufficiently far down in the queue by other messages.

Blogs: Weeks

Comments posted on third-party blog posts vary widely depending upon the reach of the original blog post and position of comments. It's important to post early as most blogs present comments in time-sorted order.

The half-life and durability of blog posts may be a week or even several weeks -- even despite the fading popularity of blogs as more and more people abandon "push" RSS Readers to adopt "pull" channels such as Twitter and Facebook. You can always amplify or highlight a new blog post via more immediate channels such as a Facebook page or Twitter account.

And, remember, on blogs, more so than in probably any other channel, copy quality counts. Information shared via your blog, which is either exclusive or controversial increases the likelihood of extending message durability.

Wikipedia: Months

Wikipedia is at the far end of the message durability spectrum because the content is largely accurate and relevant and is aggressively indexed by the search engines. Just make sure your Wikipedia content is of high quality and accurately sourced, or it will likely be rapidly removed by the volunteer page reviewers, who are vigilant in stamping out blatant PR flackery.

We came up with this spectrum after several years of research and experimentation by our team at Spring Creek Group, but it isn't necessarily definitive. Experiment with analytics to understand the unique half-lives and durability of your own community outreach and customer engagement efforts.

blogging, commentary, facebook, social media, twitter

3 comments about "The Half-Life Of A Tweet ".

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Steve Haar from Fanatically Digital, October 5, 2009 at 2:51 p.m.
“You can always amplify or highlight a new blog post via more immediate channels such as a Facebook page or Twitter account.”
One of the important aspects of using the various social channels is getting a handle on the interaction between them. As you mentioned, blogs can be amplified by a tweet, but should it? If it is a point in time fact that you want to share, Twitter is great. If it needs context, or elaborates on prior subjects of the blog, then a blog post with a directing tweet is in orders. Before jumping into the arena, a messaging strategy needs to be developed that outlines how information is communicated via the various channels; this gives contexts for using your knowledge of the half-life.
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Jan Zlotnick from the zlotnick group, October 6, 2009 at 10:36 a.m.

Clay McDaniel's half-life message should resonate and ripple well past the Wiki far end of media conversation and strategy. And Steve Haar is wise in asking that we should ask ourselves when considering integrated social (and traditional) media ( Steve's "...but should it? It's a question that goes to the core of social media for us. Being relevant. Being an authentic, transparent brand builder through real, meaningful category conversations. To us, it's just smarter business for our clients to not try to be smarter by half. We don't like the business (non)sense -- or broken moral compass -- of trying to outsmart your own customers, the people you want to build a trusting long-term relationship with in a transparent marketplace. In strategic thinking we're doing for a financial tech brand, we're liking the dynamic of Wiki "trigger" links, related areas that feed the basic understanding of a complex or (perceived) low-interest product or service. The key is letting go -- not trying to hard to control or manipulate -- those related trigger links. We help our clients see the business wisdom of trusting that the dynamism of their target's free-wheeling, data-seeking curiosity...will lead them to our client. We like the smart-minds-think-randomly-alike chances of good (often counter-intuitive) SEO leading a prospect to contact and make an appointment with our client. But even when there's not easily trackable evidence of contact, appointment and purchase, we believe our messaging strategy is adding knowledge and relevancy to a jaded, i-don't-need-to-learn-more market. It's called patience. We find it's not really slower, but actually faster once its wheels stop smoking and the traction takes hold and blows past the competition. A little counter-intuitive rethinking can go a long way. Jan Zlotnick, Strategic-Creative Director, The Zlotnick Group http://www.thezlotnickgroup.com

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, October 6, 2009 at 1:13 p.m.

Jan, as I learned many, many years ago in a movie made for TV when learning a new skill, "Go slower; you'll go faster." Paying attention, staying focused and absorbing what is said takes more than a twit.