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Nine Ways To Be Retweeted On Twitter

 

Posted on October 5, 2009
C. Werle

 

Are you looking for ways to increase your number of retweets on Twitter? If this is the case, then check out a study called The Science of Retweeting by Dan Zarrella. After having spent 9 months analyzing 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets (RT) he has now published his nine tips and tricks on how to get retweeted on Twitter.

Why be interested in retweets in the first place? As explains Dan Zarrella, retweets may seem like a small idea, but they are applicable to the viral concept for other media.

Here are the key results of the study:

1. The shortest links get the most retweets.

Retweets contain 3 times as many links as normal tweets (19% vs. 57%). New services to shorten your URL such as bit.ly, ow.ly, and is.gd are more popular than longer ones like TinyURL.

2. Ask for retweets.

Contrary to what you might think, it is favorable to your tweet rate if you openly ask people to retweet you. According to Zarrella, the words "please", "retweet", "check out", and "new blog post" are often found in retweets.

3. Be pertinent.

The fact that you may not have slept well or are eating a bagel doesn’t interest anyone. If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t tweet it.

4. Don’t use abbreviations.

Retweets contain more syllables per word than normal tweets and are more difficult to understand.

5. Use punctuation marks, but avoid semicolons.

98% of retweets contain punctuation marks (only 86% of normal tweets do). The most popular punctuation marks in retweets are: the colon, the period, the exclamation point, and finally the comma. Punctuation marks to avoid: the hyphen, the question mark, the ellipsis and the semicolon.

6. Tweet original content.

It may be banal, but we can’t stress it enough: original content is retweeted much more than already known information.

7. Use names.

Most retweets contain more nouns, proper names, and verbs in the third person (example: Lindsay Lohan Escapes From Rehab Facility).

8. Be pertinent.

Tweets touching on work, religion, money, media and celebrities are retweeted more often than tweets containing vulgarities, negative emotions, or ones that talk about the author himself.

9. Wait for the ideal time to tweet.

Tweet on Friday afternoons at 16:00. The proof is below...

Are you ready to change the way you tweet? On your marks, get set, tweet!


Add This

Sources
- The Science of ReTweets Report
- danzarrella.com
- fastcompany.com
- The original post on culture-buzz.fr
- Translated by H. Turner

Image sources
- fastcompany.com
- Google Images



 

Comments

1. Tuesday 6 October 2009 attime 03:08, by atkailash

Flawed on some points. Firstly, Twitter will automatically shorten URLs using bit.ly, which is likely why it is "more likely" to be retweeted. Second, people typically use a colon to separate the original tweeter’s name from the actual tweet, and semicolons are rare as punctuation anyway, especially in such a short format as Twitter.

2. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 05:20, by wolfie :: Nine-Ways-To-Be-Retweeted-On-Twitte

excellent blog about retweets.i will take more notice of my own tweets from now on.

thanks again

3. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 05:20, by Dave :: Great data

Thanks for reporting these results in such a reader-friendly manner. Amazing how such little changes in punctuation could have a BIG impact.

Time to retweet your article :)

4. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 05:24, by wolfie :: growing quail

sorry i made amistake in the subject column.awesome blog and i am still learning about twitter and how to use it best for myself. there are so many things to consider when using twitter.feel free to tweet me some more hints and tips.

wolfie

5. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 05:45, by BravoCharlieComAu

Excellent article, thank you for the insights.

6. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 05:55, by Pam Ivey :: http://www.mycreativeassistant.com/blog

Great post! I did particularly find the punctuation "retweetability" interesting. I’m going to be paying more attention to my Tweets for these.

7. Wednesday 7 October 2009 attime 16:56, by Matches Malone

This assumes that my goal is to be retweeted. This analysis is flawed otherwise.

8. Thursday 8 October 2009 attime 16:40, by Katrina

Excellent article! I will make sure to bookmark this page and take note of it while tweeting!

Thank you!

9. Thursday 8 October 2009 attime 17:26, by Jessyca :: GrapeSmart, Smart talk about wine from non-professionals just like you

Matches — If your desire is to be retweeted, this gets the job done to help you along. If your desire is specifically NOT to be retweeted, well you’ve got guidance for how to achieve that now, too.

This was very helpful for me, folks. Thanks for publishing these finds and not hoarding ’em for yourselves!

10. Thursday 8 October 2009 attime 19:03, by HealthcareGuru :: ReTweets" You Rock!

You Rock! Great analysis & blog post. Very useful overall. Bravo! Marshall McCulan would be pleased. I focus my tweets on healthcare exclusively and try to minimize and avoid personal eating and sleeping habits. Please follow me @ http://twitter.com/HealthCareGuru

11. Saturday 10 October 2009 attime 07:42,

12. Tuesday 13 October 2009 attime 19:36, by MollyBread

I don’t understand the definition of a "random" tweet. Should it be described as "all-other-tweets" meaning any tweet that is not retweeted? The description "random" is confusing. Specifically with regard to point 6 - Be original. I totally get the concept, but don’t understand the corresponding graphic. What is the label for the Y axis? Maybe I’m missing something...

13. Friday 16 October 2009 attime 17:08, by Sadon França :: Twitter

Really great nine tips here, the time to tweet is very important, but some times you can’t wait, if the information is hardnews.

http://twitter.com/sadonfranca

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