How to increase retweetability

So you just found an awesome video, like a cat standing for 47 seconds or a dancing stormtrooper. Maybe you wrote a pretty good blog post and want to share it with the Twitterverse. End game…you want people to see/read/watch what you’re posting.

How do you do it? You can post it on Twitter, but that’s just a tweet in the ocean in real-time; not everyone will see it. There’s a chance people might retweet it and you get some exposure.

But how do you get retweets? Don’t ask for retweets. Read my post on why you shouldn’t.

Behold, the guide to retweetability, written by some guy who tweets a lot but is not a social media expert:

Don’t be a twooshbag. A twoosh is a tweet that takes up all 140 characters. Just think about it…how the hell is someone going to retweet your post if you don’t give them the room to do so? Sure, they can use the retweet function on Twitter’s website, but that thing sucks.

Size matters. Most of the time, I don’t care if people retweet my posts or not. However, if there’s something I find really worthy of sharing, I give the tweet space. My handle is 10 characters long, so I make character-space for that and “RT” along with space for another person to retweet. That’s space for retweet of a retweet.

Timing. It’s always about timing. Don’t post your tweet in the middle of the night if you’re hoping someone to retweet it, or even read it for that matter. Okay, I’m sure @mayhemstudios and @minervity will read it because they never sleep! It’s not rocket science; think about when most of your followers are awake and post then.

Try again. Guy Kawasaki says it’s stupid to think someone is reading every single tweet you post. I agree 100%. Just because you post it once doesn’t mean you never can again. That said, don’t post it 400,000 times either!

If someone doesn’t retweet your post, don’t feel bad. It doesn’t mean people don’t find it interesting or aren’t reading it. If I retweeted everything I found interesting on Twitter, I would destroy the API limit and end up in Twitter jail.

Happy Tweeting (and retweeting)!