Learning the Science of Retweets and Boost Your Twitter Marketing Campaign

Importance of Retweets in Twitter Marketing

Retweeting is a powerful marketing tool and it is an important component of Twitter Marketing. You can hardly find a social media marketing campaign in Twitter without retweets; yet, there are still quite a handful of marketers that do not leverage on the potential of retweeting in further expanding the Twitter presence of businesses to a wider audience.

Retweeting is quite different from tweets. While the process is quite simple since all you have to do is just retweet a tweet without going through the process of formulating your own message to send to your followers, it actually goes beyond just resending other people’s tweets.

To be successful, there are other important factors that must be given proper attention to; otherwise, the campaign will still end up in failure. Marketing by retweeting is not a mathematical formula where the answer is guaranteed if you have the right factors. Rather, it is a rocket science that requires better understanding of behaviors, trends, patterns, and principles in order to come up with the best solution to a problem.

In this case, it is important to understand how your followers react to your tweets and retweets sent during certain times. A single message sent repeatedly at varied times of the day or in a week can bring different results. Likewise, the style of the message can also affect the outcome and the reactions of the followers. There are other factors that can affect the results as well.

2 Forms of Retweets

Retweet Your Tweets

Many marketers think that one tweet is enough; it’s actually not. Just because you have already sent a tweet to all your followers that do not provide guarantee that your message is already through and you don’t have to send the same message again.

The truth is, not all of your followers may be online during the time you sent the message. Your tweet will be quickly buried deeper in the timeline as newer tweets keep coming in. This is where retweeting comes in. All you have to do is just retweet your tweet to increase the visibility of your marketing message.

Retweet Other People’s Tweets

Another type is to retweet the tweets of other people, especially the key influencers in the Twitter community. You can leverage on the amazing power of popular tweets by retweeting them, thereby giving your profile better exposure to more prospects and to many potential followers. Retweeting popular and trending tweets can give you a boost in views to your profile, as well as in capturing more followers.

Powerful Retweeting Tips

To set your Retweeting campaign off to a nice start, keep in mind the following tips that can help produce better results from your campaign.

Retweets usually consist of the username of the sender and the word “RT.” This already consumes about 20 characters on an average. Since the character-limit in every tweet is 140 characters then you are left with 120 characters for your retweet message. So make it short but concise.

You must also keep this in mind when sending retweetable tweets. Make room for your followers to retweet your message. If you maximize the 140-character limit in your tweet, then you are leaving no more room for your followers to retweet your post.

Take note that the number of characters can greatly influence the retweet rate. In one study, the highest retweet rate was observed on tweets containing about 71 to 100 characters, followed by more than 100 characters; while retweets with less than 40 characters got the lowest retweet rate. Thus, length does matter a lot, and you must always remember this when formulating your key message or comments for your retweets.

Retweet Popular Tweets of Key Influencers

Leverage on the power of popular tweets of key influencers in your niche or in the blogging community. People with authority attract more followers, and if you retweet their tweets then there is higher chance that your retweets will be read and retweeted as well.

On top of that, others will check out our profile, and if they find it interesting then some of them may start following you. So start searching for the famous personalities in your specific industry and check out their tweets from time-to-time while selecting the best tweets to retweet. Don’t focus on just one key influencer but choose a handful of them to boost your campaign.

Insert a Call-to-Action Statement

One of the biggest flaws in marketing is failure to insert the a powerful call-to-action statement that converts. A lot of marketers simply hope for the best and expects that prospects will take action based on their sales pitch.

The truth is, even if your sales presentation is powerful and very convincing, but if it lacks the call-to-action statement at the end, only a few will grab the offer. Some buyers will need just a little push to put things into action, and this is where the call-to-action statement comes in.

In the case of Twitter marketing via retweeting, the most common call-to-action statement is ‘Please Retweet’ or ‘PleaseRT.’ According to a post by Neil Patel at Quicksprout about Twitter for marketing statistics, the powerful statement ‘Please Retweet’ can fetch up to 51% retweet rate while the statement ‘PleaseRT’ can potentially generate up to 39% retweet rate.

You can observe the tremendous impact on retweet rates by just adding a short call-to-action statement. Thus, don’t ever make the mistake of missing this out in your Twitter campaign.

Be Mindful of the Best Time to Retweet

One of the most important factors to consider is proper timing, which is crucial to the results of your campaign. Don’t just tweet and retweet anytime as you please. You must, instead, send your retweets during certain time of the day and certain days in a week that produce optimum results.

There were several studies made with retrospect to the best time to tweet, and in the same Quicksprout study, the best time to tweet is from 12 noon to 2 pm, while the ideal retweeting time is from 5 pm to 8 pm. It’s quite surprising that tweets and retweets have different optimum time. Nevertheless, just observe them and you shall maximize the results.

Aside from the best time of the day, you must also observe the ideal day in a week to retweet your tweets, or those of the key influencers in the industry. In the same trial, the best time for retweeting is Friday followed by Thursday.

You will find that some studies reported the best time to tweet is Wednesday, which is quite different from the above result. However, those that reported Wednesday as the ideal time were based on tweets, while the above data was based on retweets. In a nutshell, if you are going send a tweet, do it at noontime of Wednesday up to 2 pm. But if you are retweeting, then do it from 5 pm to 8 pm on Friday.

Twitter marketing is not all about sending tweets; it must include retweeting as well. If you want to achieve high-performance results from your campaign, then carefully observe some of the powerful tips shared herein to boost your Twitter marketing campaign.