Why Nobody Retweets You (and Me) #socialmedia #quotable #visual
Barack Obama has about 100M followers, and gets between 10k-150k shares for each tweet (mostly 30k-50k). Those enormous numbers also mean he gets about 0.1% RT on good days, and 0.01% on the low end. Scale that to only 10,000 followers (already not a small audience) and that’s a mere 1 to 10 RT for your tweets.
What can we do to generate more appeal? Here are a few simple ways:
- Share something actually interesting to your audience
You wrote an article? You went to a conference? (I often do). Rather than a selfie, post the key ideas you shared, or the new things you learned. That’s real value for your readers.
2. Not just one tweet
Why make it a single tweet? It’s hard to know what will stick, but if you post several ideas in succession, you increase your chances.
3. Think ‘quotable’
Imagine you’re a journalist and you’re only going to keep only a sentence to sum things up. Make it catchy.
4. Add a visual
Add an image or a graph, picked to look good in the small format of a twitter stream. Visual appeal — informative, surprising, inspiring, humorous — can all work. Videos too.
5. Try variations in wording, time, visuals
Don’t expect everyone to be reading their feed when you post. Try later too.
6. Add references
Hashtags and @mention of people either present or relevant.
Let’s try!