Size Matters in Retweetability
July 14, 2009 at 10:47 pm Leave a comment
I’ve read numerous articles on how to ensure that your tweets are retweeted – or, forwarded on to your followers’ followers. Retweets are an excellent way to attract new followers – you are essentially recommended to a group by someone they trust. And you don’t have to be a big business to know that the best way to attract new business is by referrals.
Most opinions on what makes a tweet most retweetable focus on content. And I agree. The things I tend to retweet are items I find highly interesting and I think those following me will also be compelled. That’s one of the central traits of successful tweeting – sharing information of interest.
I recently attended a webinar by Hubspot on Twitter tips and they suggested that, in addition to “top notch blogs”, some of the most shared types of content are new data and funny videos. So certainly consider those when you’re deciding what to tweet. But I’d also like to add one consideration that I haven’t read much about. The length – or size – of your tweets.
I can think of one particular tweep whom I follow that almost always offers rich content in their tweets. And I find myself retweeting them just about every day. The problem is, their tweets are always too long. Here’s why – when you post an original tweet, your username is not counted in the 140 characters. But when your message is retweeted, your username is counted. So, if you have tweeted something and congratulated yourself on maximizing those 140 characters, you may have actually done yourself a disservice.
Sometimes, I’ll tweak a too-long tweet – for instance substituting “2” for “to” or “4” for “for” and such – if I really want to forward the information. But as a writer, I never feel good about messing around with someone else’s content. After all, their username is still attached (and you need to leave it there…it would be like stealing their content if you didn’t). And, I would venture to guess that when most retweeters see the content go into the pink – indicating a tweet too long to be sent – they just abandon ship without retweeting and move on.
I’ve noticed that most of those I’m following range in username length from about 15 characters at the longest to two at the shortest (that would be @ev, Twitter’s CEO, not surprisingly). So your first step to retweetability would be to find the shortest name possible that still represents who you are. Outside of that, I would consider if you want to be retweeted, trying to fit your tweets into 125 words rather than the full 140. That way, even those with the longest names will be able to easily retweet without editing your content, and potentially butchering your message. Which will really kill your retweetability.
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