Should I post this?
Why all content is ephemeral
Last week I learnt about the Japanese concept of kaizen or “continuous improvement” in Sharmadean Reid’s new book New Methods for Women. Originating as a business philosophy in 1950s Japan, kaizen is based on the idea that making positive, gradual changes will lead to significant results.
It reminded me that from the outside looking in at a brand or a creator, it is exactly this messy middle part of making gradual moves we’re most interested in. Seeing end results shared online; a product launch, a creator collaborating with a dream brand, a new app feature being launched etc. is nowhere near as interesting as the journey that took the brand or creator there.
Brands have traditionally differentiated between content that’s suitable for telling “work in progress” type stories and content that is more enduring and serious. For example, you might use Instagram Stories to show funny BTS of your team prepping for an event but only post videos from the event itself on your feed.
We’ve been trained products like Snapchat and Instagram Stories to view certain content formats as temporary (Stories, Lives, ads to a certain extent) and most content as permanent (YT videos, blogs, podcasts, websites, social “feed” posts etc.).
Technically, all content posted on a social media platform permanently belongs to that platform, Stories included. But when thinking about how we want to evolve as brands and people creating and growing things online, I like to flip this idea on its head and instead consider every piece of content as ephemeral.
Most of the content you create as a brand will be relevant to your audience and community for a staggeringly short amount of time. Consultant and researcher Scott Grafius has conducted ongoing research on just how short since 2018. His research utilises the concept of “half-life” which is traditionally used to measure how long it takes for nuclear waste (a lot to unpack here!) to decay. In internet terms, Grafius defines half-life as the “time it takes for a post to receive half of its total engagement (such as likes, shares, and comments)”. It’s a stark reminder of how short a life the majority of your content has.
Lifespan of Social Media Posts 2024
Snapchat post lifespan: 0 minutes
X post lifespan: 43 minutes
Facebook post lifespan: 76 minutes
Instagram post lifespan: 20 hours
LinkedIn post lifespan: 24 hours
YouTube post lifespan: 9 days
Pinterest post lifespan: 114 days
Blog post lifespan: 2 years
You can read the full report here.
Content formats and the ways in which we consume them will continue to evolve. Even if your 2024 greatest content wins could be accessed in 2029, it’s unlikely anyone will be sifting back through to find them. Moreover as the brand, you don’t get to decide which of the content in your ecosystem has a long and prosperous life. That’s up to your audience.
This isn’t a free pass to create crap content; the internet is too saturated to cut through with anything less than very good. But often I see brands postpone publishing content to make tiny tweaks that ultimately don’t matter. We’re not sculpting marble here.
No one knows what content will land today or remain a big hitter for years - the only way to work this out is by publishing, testing, learning, iterating on repeat. Treating all content as ephemeral as you do this helps because:
It quiets the “shOulD I poSt this?!” voice in your head. It’s not that deep. Everything is a work in progress!
It’s a permission slip to share a more real side with more people in new places. Your brand’s sense of humour deserves to escape the confines of your IG stories.
It mirrors how people (not brands or creators) are using the internet atm.
It encourages you to prioritise co-creation with others. The pull of listening to a live conversation between two or more people is that you’re not sure how it will go as a viewer. How can you bring more of this feeling into more of your digital spaces?
It reminds you to create within the context of today’s internet rather than guessing at how it will live on in your brand’s ecosystem forever more.
Thanks for reading and catch you soon :)
Matilda
Matilda Lucy is an independent digital marketing strategist and consultant working with challenger consumer brands in the UK, Europe, and the US.