- July 23, 2015
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8 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Tweeting
If you’ve spent any time perusing our social media articles, you’ve learned a thing or two about marketing with Twitter, including using it to boost your SEO profile and learning to engage and entice followers with clever, irresistible headlines.
But as Twitter-savvy as you may be, there’s more to know that could help take link clicks, retweets and reach to a whole new level.
The When, Where, Why and How
The Twitter-verse’s 255 million active users generate more than half a billion Tweets daily, according to Buffer’s Scientific Guide to Writing Great Tweets, noting that link clicks account for more than 90 percent of user/Tweet interactions.
Now be honest. Doesn’t the sheer scale of this activity just boggle your mind? Or maybe it helps you envision new social media marketing opportunities. If so, here are some Twitter best practices and insights you can start using tomorrow:
- Headline Formatting. Sixty-four percent of respondents in one user poll preferred sentence case (first letter of each word capped) to all lower case or all cap headlines.
- Maximizing Retweets. Seventy-eight percent of user engagement with a brand’s tweets come from retweeting the brand’s content. Tweets that explicitly ask followers to retweet a post are retweeted 12 times more often than those that don’t; biggest surprise–when ‘retweet’ is spelled and not abbreviated (RT), the retweet rate jumps to a whopping 23 times higher than average.
- Ideal Length. Hundred-character Tweets work best because they’re long enough for the originator to tweet something of value and short enough for retweeters to add their two cents.
- When to Post. Post often as you like, providing you have the time and (relevant) content, Buffer says. Space them out, regardless of the count, and alternate between link posts, promotional tweets and conversation starters, which often include a question.
- Word Choice and Sharing. Research by Salesforce says that the most highly shared Tweets include these types of words:
- Imperatives–words that tell you to do something, such as ‘look,’ ‘see,’ and ‘make.’
- Visual words–such as ‘video’ and ‘photos’ that promise engaging visual content
- ‘How-to’ phrases that explain a process or teach a new skill
- Using Hashtags. Tweets with hashtags receive twice the engagement of those without; also, one- and two-hashtag tweets beat three-tag tweets by 21 percent.
- Best Day. B2B brands enjoy 14% more engagement on weekdays than weekends, according to Buffer.
- Best Time to Tweet. Daytime and afternoons are best for Twitter engagement, with retweet rates peaking around 5 p.m. (Eastern). Posts sent at noon and 6 p.m. receive higher CTRs than other times of day. Tweets sent after 8 p.m. any day and 3 p.m. on Friday are largely ignored.