Is your singular purpose in life to get retweeted? If so, I have no idea why, but here's your starter kit
So, my good friend Joel (@ActsOfIowa) pointed out yesterday an interesting article from copyblogger with data showing the most retweeted tweets on Twitter (those last four words would have comprised the most bizarre collection of words three years ago). I like data, so I found this information interesting.
Here are some things that stood out:
“Nearly 20% of all ‘normal’ tweets contain a link, yet almost 70% of retweets do.”
“I found that retweets tend to be noun-heavy and use third-person verbs.”
The above images define some of the most retweetable words and parts of speech you should include to get people to share YOUR stuff with the rest of the world! Combine this with copyblogger’s Compelling Headlines, and you should be writing some great tweets.
Probably the next most important thing to consider is the first two words of your tweet. Check out Jakob Nielsen’s research on this from his April Alertbox (First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye) of this year. Probably more than anywhere else users are scanning their tweet streams for info (okay, this is an assumption, I have no data to support that statement, but I know from my personal use of Twitter I do some major scanning). So on Twitter, more than ever, the start of the tweet had better provide useful information.
In that research, they tested “how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items.”
Later in the year, Nielsen shared how they used iterative design to arrive at the best possible tweet format for their usability conference this year (Twitter Postings: Iterative Design). Through five rounds of iterations, they took this tweet from this:
Announcing LAS VEGAS and BERLIN as the venues for our biggest usability conference of the year http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
To this:
LAS VEGAS (October) and BERLIN (November): venues for our biggest usability conference ever http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
Somewhat related, and a fascinating thing to examine is Nielsen’s eyetracking research, which creates a “heat map” of where users’ eyes scan web documents.
Finally, according to the data, I believe I have concocted the tweet that is least likely to ever get retweeted right here!
“Hey! Bored watching/listening to game at work. Haha! Tired…well, going back home to bed but gonna sleep some tomorrow. LOL!”
In summary:
- Include links
- Think nouns and third-person verbs
- Consider your first few words carefully for scanning
Happy (re)tweeting!
