7 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter

Just about everybody is on Twitter these days; Celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, web masters, news correspondents, bloggers, business brands and of course you (hopefully)!   The great thing about this is that because everyone is on Twitter, it makes it a lot easier to get your name out there and get people talking about your business.  There are a lot of benefits if you can get more retweets as possible, but to do that you need to know how!

A Retweet is when someone on Twitter re-posts one of your tweets to their own followers.  This is great as it features your own Twitter account name in the retweet, meaning that your name gets out there in front of a whole new audience. This is also a way in which Twitter becomes a viral marketing tool, if a high profile Twitter user/celebrity retweets you, you can gain a LOT of exposure!  Your tweet could end up getting retweeted again and again until it reaches a few hundred, thousand, or even million (if you’re lucky) people, and you may hit the jackpot in terms of follower count.

Due to this reason alone, Twitter followers of people who get retweeted a lot double in weeks. This is one of the reasons why I took a little while to look into the factors that get you as many retweets as possible. Here are the best methods that can guarantee you as many retweets as possible.

Ways To Help You Get More Retweets

1. Keep Tweets Relatively Short

A retweet requires space.  Not only is space required to add your twitter name (i.e. ‘RT @matt_oit:‘ or ‘via @matt_oit‘), but retweeter’s may want to add something to it, such as “here’s what I found” or “an interesting opinion from so-n-so”.

It is better that you leave a little bit of space at the end of the tweet, so that the retweeter can add something.  It may put people off trying to retweet something if you have already reached your 140 character limit.

2. Keep Your Twitter Username Relatively Short

Your Twitter username is obviously very important as that is what you will be known by online.  That said, the shorter your Twitter ID is, the better.  It has been proven that longer twitter user ID’s have a fewer number of retweets. It is much easier for people to remember short twitter user names, plus it helps keep tweets shorter (see #1).   People simply don’t want to retweet from “summerresortsspecialist” while they can easily retweet from “kevin1” instead.

3. Tweet What People Want To Retweet

Most of the time, a particular idea or an aspect of something turns out to be the elephant in the room. Everybody knows about it, and everybody has an urge to talk about it. Nobody ventures, though. In such cases, be the first to mention it or better yet, tweet about it. You break the silence and everyone will jump at your Tweet. Saying, for instance “kevin1 has finally said it…”.

The point is, you have to tweet what everyone wants to hear. They may or may not already know it, but as long as you speak the word of the public, the public will speak your word.

4. Tweet At The Right Time

Sometimes timing can mean everything.  It looks like the best time is (at least for the North Americans), 2-6 pm Eastern Standard Time. If you don’t know the right time to tweet, don’t you worry! There are plenty of Twitter apps to help you find the right time to tweet based on the location of your followers.  Check out this post from Mashable – ‘Top 5 Tools to Better Time Your Tweets‘.

5. Retweet Others

Never mind how to get more retweets for yourself, why don’t you retweet other people? In fact, it is known that when you retweet others, others will retweet you. It is sort of like an unwritten rule. If you have many followers who actually listen to you and are interested in your tweets, then you will be able to play this game. Simply retweet some of their tweets so that they get a minor boost to their accounts. Get this tradition going by helping new accounts gain some exposure through your established account. After a while, what do you know? You may get much more exposure to your account.

6. Ask For Retweets

The 10 most retweeted words are;

1. you,
2. twitter,
3. please,
4. retweet,
5. post,
6. blog,
7. social,
8. free,
9. media,
10. help,

It may sound cheeky, but actually including “please retweet” in your tweets can help share your content to a wider audience. Millions of retweets fly about every minute that carry that exact phrase, ‘please retweet’, so why not use it yourself!

7. Tweet Links

Many people like to see links in tweets. That is one of the reasons they are coming to Twitter, to share and find new content.  They want to get updated on various things that are going around in their industry or just find stuff on what they are interested in. In such a world, a new link, a new video, a new article, etc., are valuable. Give it to them, and they will retweet you.

It’s been shown that Tweets that include a link are much more likely to get retweeted, so they are worth including (whether they are your own links or someone else’s).

Conclusion

These are just a few ways that you can help promote yourself on Twitter to get more retweets.  Twitter has become something much more than a microblogging platform, it’s a promotional tool that you can use for your business when used in the right way.  That is why it is essential that you develop your Twitter account and gather as many followers as you can.

Do you have any other effective tips on how to get more retweets?  We would love to hear from you if you have. Please let us know in the comment section below – and don’t forget to Tweet this post!