When you post a link or content on Facebook or Twitter it begins a relatively quick process of moving down your viewers social updates list. On my Facebook page, a link only stays above the fold for about 30 seconds. What does this mean for you dedicated posters? It means that our posts have a shelf life. There is a small amount of time that our posts are still good for and after that they will cease to generate much of any value for us.

As it turns out, bitly reviewed some of their statistics and  presented some interesting information. For those who are not aware, Bitly is a link shortening service. Bitly was able to determine the average half-life of a posted link on both Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The results are pretty interesting. Any link submitted through your Twitter feed will have a half-life of about 2.8 hours. Any link submitted through Facebook will have a half-life of about 3.2 hours. Essentially after 3 hours, your postings will receive about half of the attention it did when you first posted it. YouTube links actually held on a bit longer and the half-life for them was 7.4 hours.

What does this mean as far as the Veterinary Office is concerned? Second chance postings. If you have a relevant link to share, there is a good bet that if you share it in the morning, only a portion of your followers will see it. My recommendation would be to share that link twice throughout the day, once in the morning and once in the early afternoon.