Some say content is king. I say, it’s also ambassador. New research from PostRank suggests how your best content is enjoying a longer life outside the borders of your blog.

Postrank’s services track how content filters out to readers through comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other forms of interaction in social media networks, helping companies gauge influence and reach. The company reported trends in overall user interaction with content (“engagement”) that suggests how social media networks are changing where and how long your content is digested. While the results may be skewed towards B2C, they are still important for technology marketers to consider.

• Content sharing and discussion has left the blog – Sharing and discussion about content are increasingly happening away from the publisher’s site. According to PostRank’s sampling of the top 1000 feeds it monitors, on-site engagement (such as commenting) has dropped by over 50% from 2007 to 2009. Off-site engagement has skyrocketed, driven by the share, like and retweet functions now commonly used in Facebook, Twitter and most other social networks.

Percentage of engagement with content, on and off the publisher’s Web site. (PostRank)

• The effective life-span of content is growing – In 2007, PostRank recorded that 94% of all the engagement happened on first day of publishing. Not surprising, but here’s where it gets interesting: in 2007, 98% of the first-day engagement occurred within the first hour. That number is now steadily dropping: to 83% in 2008, and 64% in 2009. More and more people find the content after the first hour. In other words, social media is increasing the life-span of content by providing more chances for a wider audience to find it over a longer time.

So, technology marketers, the impact of your great content is likely to increase as your audiences get more active on social media networks. To gauge the impact of the content, prepare to start monitoring discussions wherever your audience, and your content, happen to go.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 9:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.