Bang for Tweet

Get More Retweets, Shares, and Favorites

Written by Sebastian Fung.

You tweet, you tweet, and you tweet. Nothing. No retweets or shares. Not even a favorite. A lot of people new to Twitter find it frustrating for this very reason — they equate it to shouting into a room of people who are, coincidentally, also shouting and trying to get heard.

If you want to get your tweets noticed, you need to find a way to stand above the crowd. It’s not about shouting more or shouting louder, but shouting smarter. Although FunnelFeed doesn’t help you craft tweets (yet!), we want to give you the tools to craft better, more effective tweets. Want more retweets, shares, and favorites? Check out our tips!

Tip 1: 71-100 Characters Tweets

Track Social did a study which showed the optimal tweet length for retweets is between 71-100 characters. Go over 100 if you have to, but stay above 70.

A lot of new users get trapped into the idea that they need to use all 140 characters to be effective. Wrong. A lot of people like using the “quote tweet” function that allows them to provide commentary to your tweet. If you actually use all 140 characters, they’ll need to edit your tweet, before being able to add in their commentary.

Tip 2: Include (Twitter) Pictures

Buffer found that including a picture increases retweets by 94%. However, this is only true if you include a Twitter picture (via pic.twitter.com). Interestingly, pictures with Instagram links were 42% less likely to be retweeted.

Include pictures. Just not Instagram, or non-Twitter uploaded ones.

Tip 3: Weekends and Afternoons

Want to get more reads, clicks, and shares? Dan Zarrella has some tips for you!

First, tweet on the weekends. Why? People probably have more free time, leading to more time to actually read your links.

Need to tweet during weekday since you’re a B2B company? Tweet in the afternoon. 2pm is the optimal time to maximize your tweets, with people settling into their afternoon lull and food coma from lunch.

Tip 4: #Hashtags #Hashtags

Fusework Studios found that hashtags increase engagement. Using one or two hashtags increase engagement by 21%. Hashtags are powerful, but with great power, comes great responsibility. Using more than two hashtags decreases engagement by 17%.

Tip 5: Use FunnelFeed

When I started using FunnelFeed for my personal account, I started noticing dramatically more retweets, comments, and favorites. It makes sense though. Since FunnelFeed favorites other people’s tweets, they’re instinctively more likely to look at your Twitter profile and your tweets, and interact positively by engaging you.

I think this sums it up pretty well:

In the book Influence by Robert Cialdini, he describes an experiment where the experimenter had an assistant do a small, unsolicited favor (in this case, buying a soda) for the true subject of the social experiment. Researchers found that subjects treated to the beverage later bought twice as many raffle tickets from the assistant than the subjects not treated to a beverage. This demonstrates the principle of reciprocity: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. More important, if you do the scratching first, people will feel compelled (often without even knowing why) to return the favor.

Do you have any special tips or tricks? Let us know on Twitter (@FunnelFeed).

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