Free Social Media Research Will Help You Get Your Posts Retweeted On Twitter
Sep 22nd, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: General, MicrobloggingFast Company has an interesting article that looks at Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter.
It features the work of Dan Zarella, who analyzed 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets to find out what factors influence your “retweetability”.
There are some surprises.
For example, newer URL shortners, such as bit.ly, ow.ly, and is.gd, were much likelier to get retweeted than older, longer services, such as TinyURL.
This could be because popular Twitter users tend to jump on the latest thing – or because shaving a couple of characters off the URLs makes your messages more retweetable. Who knows? But setting your default URL shortener in apps like Tweetdeck takes about 5 seconds – so why not try it?
Zarella also identified the most commonly retweeted words and phrases:
This doesn’t mean you can randomly combine these words and phrases (see the post title) and expect to suddenly be more retweetable – but it does strongly suggest that people that get retweeted the most are the ones that are tweeting to you about social media topics.
Zarella also found that “boring” phrases make you “unretweetable”:
“There are a number of ‘-ing’ verbs, including ‘going,’ ‘watching’ and ‘listen-ing,'” that were not retweeted very often, he writes. Translation: Unless you’ve got a really interesting life–Shaquille O’Neal, anyone?–do not legitimately answer Twitter’s “What are you doing?” prompt.
Want to know what the real surprise of Zarella’s research is, though?
The Kiss Of Death On Twitter?
It’s the semi-colon:
A whopping 98% of RTs contain some form of punctuation (compared with 86% of normal tweets), with colons, periods, exclamation points, commas, and hyphens leading the way. (Where you at, question mark??) But Zarrella really sticks it to semicolons, calling them “the only unretweetable punctuation mark.”
Use a semi-colon in your tweet, and it’s the kiss of death.
Time To Tweet?
Finally, if you really want to get retweeted, tweet at 4pm on Friday.
I love this statistic, because it seems counterintuitive. Why should there be a dramatically higher likelihood that your message will bet retweeted if you post it at 4 pm on Fridays?
Zarella doesn’t offer an explanation – but maybe it’s because on Friday afternoon, people that would normally be busy working actually take time to be active on Twitter.
None of this is a recipe for social media success on Twitter – but it does show that if you want your message to reach the broadest audience, you need to keep brevity in mind. focus on clear communication about topics that a interest a broad audience and word things in a way that will connect with your followers.
Thanks for the info. Now if I can only remember that while I try to learn the whole Twitter, Tweet thingy. I'll be checking it closely around 4 today. Kudos.
I am guessing that at 4pm on a Friday most people are looking to have finished work or finishing very soon so the relief of the oncoming weekend has suddenly got them into a better frame of mind for using twitter.
Or maybe the boss leaves at three?
Who uses semi-colons in tweets, anyway?
That stat is probably a side effect of nobody wanting to retweet anal-retentive grammarians.
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Ironic that "please retweet" would actually be enough to get something retweeted.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Your post would certainly make sense as I have noticed an increase in Friday afternoon activity in relation to my tweets being retweeted at around 4pm, although if you have the right followers following you in the first place it makes the whole retweet thing a lot easier and almost on autopilot
Thanks for the info. My tweets being retweeted most of the time and I did not get the reason for that…Thanks for your information…Helps me a lot.
I'd never noticed that! I thought people were paying more attention in the morning and on Mondays!
Interesting info.
indeed ,nobody will.