What lives for just 12 seconds?

5 will be dead by the time you’ve read this post

One of the more alarming stats (if not the most surprising) to come out of TFM&A2014 was this…

The average lifespan of a tweet is just 12 seconds.

I have no idea where that figure comes from but I can believe it.

For a long time I’ve said at work that because of Twitter’s real time nature the intensity required to keep up the same online presence as on Facebook would be enormous.

But while as a marketer I tend to put more resource into Facebook, once I step out the door it’s Twitter that I’m first to check and most likely to post to.

Work harder or think smarter?

Of course it’s deadly obvious that the answer isn’t to post ever 12 seconds for the rest of your life.

Clearly automation tools like Hootsuite will play a part, in combination with a proper understanding of when your target audience are most likely to be checking their feed.

But I think there’s more to it even than that.

Embedding tweets as I’ve done here with a slight zest of irony and tongue firmly in cheek, can prolong the life of a tweet while adding value to a web page. I should point out that Sam and I are great friends with a long history of twitter banter, I wasn’t just trolling.