Did you know how scary the Half-life of your online comms is?

and ideas on what you can do about it…

Value: ★★★★★

Recommended link: Research from bit.ly Blog

Our commentary on online attention spans

I’ve been meaning to post on this for ages since I read a while ago in Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter book that most people most responses or tweets happen within 5 minutes of the original tweet – scary – and much worse than Email marketing. I’m not sure companies using social networks realise this unless they’ve been into the reports for a tool like Bit.ly. Of course its because most people have so many sources they follow in their stream and if they don’t see the message while browsing their stream then it’s gone. Life is too short to browse your whole stream

Well this new research gives a better picture across several comms channels and it’s actually better than 5 minutes:

It’s based on the half-life or 1,000 links shared in bitly. The results for the half-life which, which is the time it takes for the communication to get half it’s clicks are:

• Twitter = 2.8 hours
• Facebook = 3.2 hours
• Direct sources (Email or IM) it’s 3.4 hours

Take care with the last one, email marketing actually does better than this – I still think it’s half-life is more than 24 hours typically. I don’t know whether anyone has any data to support that?

Here’s an example from a single tweet which shows the typical pattern:

Marketing implications of the short half-life

So what to do about this to make communications more effective? Here are my ideas, off the top of my head based on what I do subconciously.

1. Repeat communications. Sure, you don’t want to repeat every message, but if you share content that resonates it worth re-sharing, say AM and PM.
2. Put a different spin on your original message Of course, you can just repeat, but express it differently may engage others who didn’t find the original interesting. Maybe ask a question encouraging a response.
3. Reshare other people’s messages It’s good to engage with others and not just broadcast, so maybe add the link in your reply to others.
4. Share content on different networks at different times If you use a service or apps to share your message across all networks simultaneously, there’s less chance of your message getting through than at different times when other people may see your message in their stream.
5. Use email marketing to share your good stuff Email marketing has a longer half-life and likely reaches a different audience, so make sure your email marketing is up-to-speed.

What ideas do you have to counter this issue?