5 Ways to Get Yourself Retweeted

Are you tweeting actively but having difficulty getting your followers to ReTweet your posts? Don’t worry—you’re not alone.  Many twitterers, despite their popularity have problems getting their ideas and posts spread through the Twittersphere for various different reasons. While we can’t help you with all of them, we can pass on to you some great tips on how to get ReTweeted from social media expert Dan Zarella.

Recently, Dan released an e-book characterizing some basic facts about ReTweeting. By Researching ReTweets and random tweets over a 9 month period he was able to put together a book with some basic advice on how you can get your tweets disseminated more readily.
Here’s what we took away from his information book:

1. Keep your Tweets brief. but relevant. Dan found that while simplicity is great, when it comes to ReTweets it isn’t necessarily a deciding factor. In fact, most ReTweets contain longer, higher syllable count words (which tend to be more complex) than random tweets. The research also showed that while popular information is great, it isn’t as likely to get ReTweeted as unique information. The study established that in a random sample of un-ReTweeted posts, regardless of the topic, each word was found on average 89.19 other times in the sample, whereas in random sample of ReTweets, each word was located only 16.37 times.
2. Provide Links. Dan’s study showed that tweets containing links were much more likely to be ReTweeted than posts without them. According to his research, 18.96% of un-ReTweeted posts contained links whereas 56.69% of ReTweeted posts contained links. The message here is clear: Twitter has become a popular way to spread information from the rest of the web, and you are most likely to get ReTweeted as a reliable source if you provide a link to validate your tweet. 
3. Shorten your URLs. This directly relates to the previous two entries on our list. The shorter the URL, the briefer your post can be, and the easier it is to include a link. Enough said. 
4. Include a call to action. This is one of the bread and butter rules of content marketing. Regardless of what form your content is in, a blog post, a case study, a web page or a tweet, providing a call to action for your readers will entice them to be active. So? Dan’s research found that including words like “Please”, “You”, “ReTweet” and “Please ReTweet” were defining factors in whether or not a post was ReTweeted. 
5. Time of day matters. While tweeting takes place at all hours of the day—and night, Dan’s research established that most ReTweeting takes place between the hours of 3pm and midnight and that most tweeting and ReTweeting occurs during the business week rather than on weekends. 

Posted by Amberlie Denny at November 15, 2010 8:00 AM

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