We all know that the proper usage of Twitter, can result in excellent positioning of your brand and creation of a strong affinity with your followers. Of course it is simply not enough to post simple messages in a 140 characters. You have to adopt a marketers brain and employ a mix of video, photo and hashtags, which should get your message across. You should also know that the biggest form of engagement and content amplification resides in retweets. They have been quite a few reports on what makes an actual tweet successful. Take last years study from TrackMaven, which attempted to tackle why Retweets were essential in measuring effectiveness in your tweets, and examine the main causes.
It tackled how pictures effect the number of retweets, calls to action in tweets and how many retweets big brands, companies, and influencers are getting. The retweet report is well worth revisiting, but who should know the platform better than Twitter themselves? The team at Twitter decided to carry out their own analysis and segmented the results by sectors:
“Adding a hashtag, photo or video to Tweets undoubtedly makes them richer, but does it bring you more user engagement? We wanted to find out. We looked at a large data set of verified users and evaluated exactly what difference it makes to add photos, videos and much more to Tweets.” – Twitter
The results were that investing creativity and adding video, links and photos all result in “an impressive boost in the number of retweets”.
Twitter determined that the most effective Tweet features across all the verified accounts they looked at are:
- Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets
- Videos get a 28% boost
- Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets
- Including a number receives a 17% bump in Retweets
- Hashtags receive a 16% boost
Twitter suggests that ‘while this research focuses on the engagement levels of individual Tweets with specific features, it’s important to think of your tweeting holistically’. Businesses should not just focus on optimizing every single tweet, but rather utilise more of your creative juices to create a compelling way for your followers and Twitter users to connect with you. Clearly visual media has to be present in your strategy.
Hayden Richards is Contributor of IntelligentHQ. He specialises in finance, trading, investment, and technology, with expertise in both buy-side, sell-side. Contributing and advising various global corporations, Hayden is a thought leader, researching on global regulatory subjects, digital, social media strategies and new trends for Businesses, Capital Markets and Financial Services.
Aside from the articles, interviews and content he writes for IntelligentHQ, Hayden is also a content curator for capital markets, analytic platforms and business industry emerging trends. An avid new media explorer Hayden is driven by a passion for business development, innovation, social business, Tech Trading, payments and eCommerce. A native Trinidadian, Hayden is also a veteran, having served with the Royal Air Force Reserves for the past 10 years.
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