Half-Life for Posts on Different Social Media Platforms
10 December 2018
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Social media is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. Well-executed, it provides several benefits: improved brand and marketplace awareness, engagement with a worldwide audience, increased traffic, enhanced search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, and more.
The lifespan of posts is of interest. Because content can live forever, a more helpful metric is half-life. It’s the amount of time it takes for a post to receive half of its total engagements. As shown in the image above and described below, the half-life of posts varies by platform.
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Pinterest
Be mindful of the half-life values when posting content.
A hi-res version of the Lifespan (Half-Life) of Social Media Posts image is available here. For permission requests, contact scott@scottgraffius.com.
Note: This article and the accompanying image were updated on October 20, 2019 to add YouTube and incorporate new data. In cases where there are multiple references for a metric and they report different values, the average is applied.
© Copyright 2018 Scott M. Graffius. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius.
đĽ The latest version of this article and visual is located here.
Social media is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. Well-executed, it provides several benefits: improved brand and marketplace awareness, engagement with a worldwide audience, increased traffic, enhanced search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, and more.
The lifespan of posts is of interest. Because content can live forever, a more helpful metric is half-life. It’s the amount of time it takes for a post to receive half of its total engagements. As shown in the image above and described below, the half-life of posts varies by platform.
- Half-life for posts: 21 minutes
- References: https://moz.com/blog/when-is-my-tweets-prime-of-life and https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/
- Half-life for posts: 30 minutes
- Reference: http://www.wiselytics.com/blog/facebook-posts-lifetime-even-shorter-than-you-thought/
- Half-life for posts 1,140 minutes (= 19 hours)
- Reference: https://get.simplymeasured.com/2014-q4-instagram-study.html#sm.00010ubysp4k5cujr2e2hdhgkg67l
- Half-life for posts: 1,440 minutes (= 24 hours)
- Reference: https://espirian.co.uk/linkedin-improve-engagement/
YouTube
- Half-life for videos: 8,640 minutes (= 6 days)
- Reference: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-lifecycle-of-a-youtube-video-2010-5
- Half-life for posts: 153,300 minutes (= 3.5 months)
- Reference: https://www.webfx.com/blog/social-media/why-pinterest-better-than-facebook-brands/
Be mindful of the half-life values when posting content.
A hi-res version of the Lifespan (Half-Life) of Social Media Posts image is available here. For permission requests, contact scott@scottgraffius.com.
Note: This article and the accompanying image were updated on October 20, 2019 to add YouTube and incorporate new data. In cases where there are multiple references for a metric and they report different values, the average is applied.
© Copyright 2018 Scott M. Graffius. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius.