25 easy ways to get more retweets on Twitter
Love to increase your results on social media but don’t know where to begin? Here are 25 easy ways to get more retweets on Twitter.
Ever wonder why some tweets magically seem to encourage people to retweet, whereas others go ignored? Or wish there was some easy, magic formula you could follow to boost your Twitter engagement?
Increasing the amount of retweets you get on Twitter doesn’t have to be a frustrating shot in the dark. With pretty much every social media automation tool (and Twitter itself) analysing millions of tweets with of data, we have plenty of insights that reveal some very simple tweaks and actions that can transform the response to your tweets from ‘who cares?’ to ‘wow! I really must retweet that’.
25 easy ways to get more retweets on Twitter
If you want your content to reach more people or even be included in the Twitter trends today, make sure to share relevant, inspiring, motivational, and authentic content. Some of these may include the news, valuable opinions, new products in the market, and any other topic that may spark the interest of your target audience.
1) Be a retweeter
You need to build good social media karma before you can receive. So if you want people to retweet you, start demonstrating your’re a generous retweeter yourself.
2) Use hashtags
According to Buffer, tweets with hashtags get two times more engagement than tweets without.
3) Add mentions
Including a mention (an @TwitterName) increases engagement as it gives people something to click on. In Twitter ads, a mention can get you 23% more clicks.
4) Include links
If you want to increase the chance of a tweet getting retweeted by as much as 86%, add a link to it.
5) Think about where you place your link
Most people add a link to the end of their tweet. But apparently if you really want to maximise your engagement, you’ll add it 90% of the way through your tweet.
6) Add an image
According to Dan Zarella from Hubspot, if you add an image to a tweet it’s 94% more likely to be retweeted.
7) Make a point!
Dan Zarella also found out that tweets with exclamation points encouraged more retweets (but interestingly, led to fewer clicks).
8) Retweet retweeters
Often the easiest way to thank someone for retweeting you is to repay the favour. So keep the goodwill going by retweeting those who have retweeted you.
9) Make your tweets interesting
Dan Zarella compiled a report of the 20 least retweetable words on Twitter. These words include:
- watching
- work
- home
- night
- bed
- sleep
- tired
- bored
- listening
- haha
- hey
Notice anything special about them? As Dan points out in his analysis, these are more casual words that we use in tweets about our mundane every day activities. Words that are likely to appear in tweets like these:
- At home watching TV
- Tired – time for bed!
- Hey, I’m bored! Time to leave work
So if you want people to notice and engage with your tweets, make it worth their while and avoid tweeting about the dull details of your everyday life.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t tweet about what you’re doing… you just need to ensure it’s relevant and interesting to your ideal followers, and actually adds something to their Twitter feed.
10) Use retweetable language
Dan also handily compiled a list of the 20 most retweetable words. Here they are:
- you
- please
- retweet
- post
- blog
- social
- free
- media
- help
- please retweet
- great
- social media
- 10
- follow
- how to
- top
- blog post
- check out
- new blogpost
Print out this list and try to use them when you can when tweeting (but naturally – don’t just cram them in without relevance) to increase your chances of retweets.
11) Ask for retweets
There’s a good reason why “please retweet” makes the list above. Why? Because if you actually ask for a retweet, people are 12 times more likely to do it. So as simple as it may seem, if you want people to retweet you, make sure you ask them!
12) Spell it out
It’s not just asking for a retweet that can boost your engagement, but how you ask. And according to research, spelling out the word ‘retweet’ gets more engagement than just using the abbreviation RT.
13) Tweet quotes
Inspirational quotes are always popular on Twitter. So, if you’re looking for an easy way to get more retweets on Twitter, find some quotes that you know your Twitter followers will resonate with and tweet them. You can either tweet the quotes as words, or create a visual from a quote using an online graphics tool like Canva (and ticking off the quote and the image boxes in encouraging retweets).
14) Don’t use every character
You may have 280 characters to play with in Twitter, but don’t feel you need to use all of them. When you only had 140 characters available, the optimum length of a tweet was around 100 characters (it varies from expert to expert, but this seems to be a good mean average). We can’t find any recent updates on this, but certainly recommend keeping tweets shorter where you can.
15) Schedule tweets
You can’t be on Twitter every minute of the day – after all you have a business to run and life to lead. You also need to sleep! So use an automation tool to schedule tweets for when you think your customers are online but you’re not.
16) Be live
That said, a Twitter feed that’s obviously completely automated isn’t very inspiring – and makes it hard for people and businesses to feel a real connection with you. So mix your automated activity with live tweeting and engagement, and show that you’re a real, live interesting and interested person or business.
17) Be interesting
We’ve already warned you against being dull on Twitter. But it’s not enough just to not be dull; if you want great engagement on Twitter you need to be interesting. And that means ensuring you share content and write tweets your ideal audience are interested in.
18) Make it easy for fans to retweet your content
If you have content on your site you’d like people to retweet, make it easy for them and have an obvious button to retweet.
19) Find your perfect time
There’s been plenty of research into the perfect times of the day and week to tweet for maximum engagement. But the end of the day you need to find out what works for your audience – then use that information to tweet accordingly.
So by all means research the optimum times for your type of business, but also monitor your tweets’ performance over a period of a time to understand when you’re getting more retweeting and engagement on Twitter.
20) Include a number
According to Twitter, tweets that contain a number get 17% more retweets than those that are number-less. What kind of numbers? It doesn’t matter! Stats, lists and even sports scores all count.
21) Use video
Tweets with videos apparently get 28% more retweets.
22) USE CAPITALS
According to research by a company called TrackMaven, tweets with capital letters are more likely to get retweets. BUT DON’T SHOUT ALL THE TIME! We recommend using capital letters sparingly for effect.
23) Say thank you
Want to encourage a retweeter to repeat the favour? Thank them! Knowing you’re appreciated is more likely to encourage them to do it again in future. Plus it’s just nice.
24) Tweet content people love
If you want someone to retweet your content, make sure you share things they love. This includes news, educational content, opinion and products.
25) Speak the right language
If you want peole to connect with your tweets (or even just understand them!) make sure you tweet in the right language. And we don’t just mean English or Spanish, but the phrases, vocabulary and abbreviations your audience is more likely to use.
Want to increase ALL your Twitter results?
Retweets are fantastic, but they’re just one tiny part of being successful on Twitter. You also need to:
- Make sure your profile is completed correctly.
- Identify your ideal followers and know how to build them.
- Plan a professional Twitter strategy.
- Know how to write tweets your followers will love (and click on).
- Understand how to use Twitter as a sales tool.
- Use hashtags properly.
- Get the right balance between automation and live engagement.
And most of all you need to be clear about exactly how Twitter benefits your business, and ensure that your efforts in growing your following and tweeting are repaid by greater brand awareness and sales.
You need to know (and do) ALL this if you want to increase your Twitter results, and make your time on Twitter worth the effort.
Turn Twitter into a powerful sales tool
Luckily, this is really easy when you sign up to Twitter Tune-up, our online Twitter course for small businesses and freelancers.
Twitter Tune-up includes everything you need to turn Twitter into a powerful sales tool, and not just get more retweets, but improve all your Twitter results – and grow your business.
Twitter Tune-up is a practical course, which means you’ll start seeing results virtually immediately once you start implementing our techniques. We even teach you how to grow your following and increase your results while spending just half an hour a day on the site.
And with lifelong access to the content, you can return to the lessons and tools inside Twitter Tune-up whenever you need a refresh.
So what are you waiting for? If you’re ready to start seeing more results from Twitter – including retweets! – join Twitter Tune-up now and turn it into the powerful sales tool it should be for you.
