Six types of tweets that get Retweeted

Have you ever posted tweets and wondered why they were not retweeted?

Well, wonder no more now that you are here. Get your tweets noticed by knowing how to draw retweets (RTs).

1. Quotes

My favourite way to get RTs is to post quotes from famous people such as Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, and other self-help gurus. These tweets are without a doubt the easiest to come up with and at the same time viral because they are likely to be appreciated.

This is how I do it:
“If you don’t set goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else.” #quote Brian Tracy

Do not make your tweets too long lest there are insufficient characters remaining for others to include you in the retweets.

2. Humorous/Interesting

Humorous tweets could save anyone from boredom or a monotonous day at work. Hence, it could also help you get people interested enough to find out more about you.

Tweets like “10 Weirdest Toilet Papers” are light-hearted and hence easy to pass on.

Find more humorous/interesting tweets at Oddee.com.

3. Trending Topics

To capture people’s interest, you should also ride the wave by tweeting content that are or related to popular news. Updates such as “10 Weird Things you didn’t know about Michael Jackson” were retweeted by many after the shocking death of MJ.
Look out for daily trending topics on your Twitter homepage as well!

4. Breaking news

People love to get updated on the latest happenings. Breaking news in 140 characters, for one, is always welcomed on Twitter. The death of late MJ in one day became the most talked about news on Twitter, and the launch of the new iphone also became part of many people’s tweets. Tweeting on the latest news automatically makes you more involved on Twitter and part of the most talked about topics.

5. Tips/ How-to tips

Tips or how-to tips are valuable to people. If you really want to benefit all your followers, you could have tweets that are not solely under your niche area.
Even if you’re in the Social Media niche, you are not limited to tweeting on your niche area. As long as your tweets are helpful, tweeting on other subjects would also receive positive responses.

6. Questions

Questions very often attract retweets as well. One day, I was doing a small chat with some friends on Twitter and to invite more opinions, I posted a question to all my followers. On the same day, I received tons of RTs with many asking their own followers for their sentiments. All the tweets had my profile @askaaronlee retweeted, giving me exposure beyond my own group of followers.

7. Creative Tweets

Creative tweets are uncommon and powerful. They are by nature, attention grabbers.
My best creative tweet was:

“Finish this word. Twitter is…? Your response will be RT”

In a short while, everyone posted their replies and the number of RTs was uncountable. Their responses, notably the interesting ones were retweeted by me. Some of the responses were:

“Twitter is interesting” “Twitter is a waste of time” “Twitter is connecting”
Conclusion

These are practically the types of tweets that stand out amongst others. They create opportunities for people to connect with you and are simple ways to get you noticed on Twitter. For instance, by doing exactly what I shared with you, I was recommended by #followfriday people as an interesting person (Not that I am bragging). Try them out!

This is a guest post by Aaron Lee,  No.1 Twitter in Malaysia, which owes it to him being a Twitter addict since March 2009. He reads self-help books during free time and a true follower of Anthony Robbins. Currently an International Marketing student in Malaysia. You can read his blog and his original post here or follow him on Twitter.

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Twitter’s not stupid – you just have boring friends

This is a guest post from Andrew Dubber.

I’ve been having conversations over the past 24 hours about the ‘value’ of social media. The social transparency and personal profile that this kind of medium affords is one of those things that crops up from time to time in articles such as this one in Techcrunch and this one in Music Think Tank – and I find myself ending up defending Twitter, which certainly doesn’t need my help.

There are several common complaints:

1) It’s inane. People just tweet about what they had for lunch;
2) It’s just celebrities and narcissists full of self-importance;
3) It’s a waste of my time;
4) It makes people I thought were interesting and exciting seem mundane and ordinary.

And I have very simple responses to those complaints.

1) No it isn’t. You clearly follow boring people with nothing to say. Don’t do that;
2) Again, no. You can follow celebrities if you want, of course – but it’s far from compulsory;
3) Really? Having conversations with other human beings is a waste of your time, but passively watching television shows you don’t actually like is a good investment of your attention? Writing a sentence about what you’re up to or thinking about a couple of times a day is a time-consuming activity that takes you away from all that important stuff you were doing?
4) If you want real people to be profound, entertaining or fascinating each time they open their mouth, you’re always going to be disappointed. If you want larger-than-life heroes, go to the movies. If you want to just be entertained and not engage, just turn on the TV. If you want mythology, read a book.

The trouble with Twitter

The problem for many people is that Twitter fails to be something they’d like it to be, when that’s not what it’s for. They want to be entertained with profound, funny and engaging content. In other words, they think it’s like broadcasting, when it’s conversation.

So that’s like turning up to somebody’s house for a cup of tea, and saying “right – entertain me”, leaning back, and waiting for a performance packed with one-liners, deep insights and useful tips.

Second, they think of the people they follow as an ‘information source’. There are some Twitter feeds that provide information of course, but they’re in the minority. Mostly it’s human beings living their lives, talking about the things that they specialise in or engage their attention. And if that’s boring, go back to your Eastenders.

If you follow me because you think I might be entertaining, or because I might be a good source of information about online music marketing strategies (or jazz, or Birmingham, or digital culture, or media studies, or whisky, or whatever), you’re probably going to be really disappointed. I do, of course, mention all of those things. But I do other things too. My twitter feed is about me, the things I’m interested in, and the people I engage with on a day to day basis – it’s not just packaged nuggets of information about my specialist subject.

But if you want to get to know me – it’s a brilliant way to engage. You’ll not only hear about the stuff I’m up to, thinking about, listening to or concerned with – you’ll also get to overhear the public conversations I have with other people I happen to think are really interesting.

My personal tribe

There’s this anthropological theory that we can deal with about 150 social relationships – and when things get bigger than that, we tend to split our tribes into smaller, more manageable groups. I’m not sure how effectively that carries over to Twitter, but all the same – at present, I follow around 140 people.

Some of those people are pictured above. They live in many different parts of the world, are a range of ages and social backgrounds, have different tastes, and do lots of different things. I consider most of them to be actual friends. They’re all people I work with, hang out with, or that I just happen to think are really interesting.

None of them are super-famous (I don’t follow Stephen Fry or Ashton Kutcher for instance), though some of them have what might be thought of as a modicum of ‘celebrity’ status.

For instance, I follow Gilles Peterson, a BBC radio DJ who plays music I happen to like – and I’m friends with his business partner; Alys Fowler, a gardening TV show presenter who I’ve met through mutual friends; Brian Travers, who’s the sax player in UB40; S-Endz, a rapper in an internationally well-known Desi-funk band called Swami; David Hendy, a media historian and author; Martin Atkins, a drummer from some famous 80s & 90s rock bands like Public Image, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and Killing Joke; Krause, a contemporary Dutch electro-pop star on the rise; John Campbell, a New Zealand television news presenter and journalist; Rhodri Marsden, author and columnist for the Independent newspaper; and Mark de Clive-Lowe, a keyboard player & music producer.

These ones are all people who have some sort of public profile, but who I’ve also actually met and had conversations with. It’s not a rule for me – and from time to time, I’ll also follow people that I’ve only ever really seen on TV (like Mark Steel or Charlie Brooker) – and some Twitter-only fictional characters I happen to find amusing (like Diana In Heaven and Average Batman). I sort of drop in and out of those ones. I tend to stick with people I’ve at least had a drink with, for the most part.

And, of course, lots of the people I follow have no ambition whatsoever to be famous or become ‘public figures’ – and nor do they do anything that would tend to bring them that sort of attention.

Following people that I already know and like in real life on Twitter is like sitting down with them in a café. And we have the same sort of conversations. But we don’t have to be ‘always on’. It’s a conversation you can drop in and out of. Some of it’s just thinking out loud. Some of it is extended back-and-forth dialogue.

People I’ve only ever encountered on Twitter

All that said, you don’t have to ‘know’ people to find them interesting. There are lots of people who follow me on Twitter who, presumably find me interesting enough to not worry about the fact that I’ve never popped over to their house for a cup of tea.

Likewise, I follow Darren Hemmings (Digital Marketing Manager for the PIAS group), Nancy Baym (a social media academic and author), Joe Muggs (an arts and music journalist), Hannah Nicklin (playwright and academic) and Katy Bairstow (a freelance tech writer).

To my knowledge, I have never been in the same room with these people (forgive me if I have that wrong – I go in a lot of rooms), but through Twitter I’ve found out about them through others, listened to what they had to say – and not only find them to be interesting people, but I’ve now had conversations with them on multiple occasions over other things we both find interesting – and I’m sure if we found ourselves in a cafe or a pub together, we’d continue the conversation in person.

But what we find interesting need not necessarily be deep or serious, though sometimes it is. Occasionally it’s just “hey look – this is quite funny” and there’ll be a link. Other times it’s personal stuff that gives people a 3-dimensional quality. Like when people who you only know through their work talk about their family, or their record collection.

And it’s that shared interest – or at least overlap of interest that allows for a connection to take place. To me, that’s what Twitter – as the social media tool of the moment – has to offer. Not a marketing platform or an entertainment and information channel – but human beings talking to each other. Sharing ideas, swapping jokes, discussing issues and just being real people together.

And in fact, some people who I now consider to be my best friends are people who I’ve been introduced to on Twitter. And I’m a fan of their music too.

The best way to use Twitter

The way I use Twitter is not “the way” to use Twitter. I know people who claim to be able to cope with following thousands, and I know others who have private accounts, and only follow a handful of people that they know intimately.

The best way is to try it out and see what works for you. Follow people you think you’d like to get to know better, then unfollow them if they become dull. Check out who other people you think are interesting are talking to. Chances are they’ll be interesting too. Don’t feel you have to keep your finger on the pulse of “all that information”. Do whatever’s manageable, interesting and useful.

But complaining that Twitter is inane, pointless, time-wasting or just narcissistic bleating only means either a) the people you’ve chosen to follow are the wrong ones; or b) you’re expecting something from Twitter it’s not offering: passive entertainment.

This is a guest post from Andrew Dubber, who kindly allowed us to repost his content. Andrew is a Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University. He’s a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and is an internationally-renowned lecturer, author, consultant, public speaker, broadcaster and blogger. His research interests include digital media cultures, online music enterprise, and music as culture. Dubber is the founder of New Music Strategies and Music Think Tank, is a board member of Un-Convention, and is a member of the board of advisors for Bandcamp. You can follow Andrew on Twitter here.

If you would like to feature on the Tweasier blog, drop us an email with your story idea – we would love to hear from you.

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Twitter places launches but breaks everything else causing major outages

As you probably already know the Tweasier team has been busy rolling out the beta of our Twitter application this week. It has been a bit of a bumpy ride due to several Twitter outages over the last week or so (not the best timing) and a few speed issues which the team here are working on.  We have had some great feedback from our users and we will be sending out more invites as soon as we have fixed everything.

Well whilst we have been busy, so has Twitter, as it is currently rolling out a new feature to help meet the demand for location tagging. Unfortunately, we are lead to believe this feature has lead to a few outages of its own. Twitter has now fixed these problems so hopefully everything should be fine and we won’t be seeing the Fail Whale anytime soon.

Twitter Places was launched earlier this week and it allows users to tell their followers where exactly their tweet is coming from. It has used the example of world cup stadiums in South Africa which could be tagged to inform individuals if they are actually at the stadium.

People can click onto a Twitter Place within someone’s message to see all the other tweets that it has been used for.

The Twitter blog revealed several other features of this launch including: 

• Foursquare and Gowalla integration: Many Foursquare and Gowalla users publish check-ins to Twitter. Location is a key component of these Tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services. This means that if you click on a Twitter Place, such as "Ritual Roasters," you will see standard Tweets and check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla.
• API: We are releasing API functionality that lets developers integrate Twitter Places into their applications. 
• Support for more browsers: Now, you can add location to your Tweets from any browser—Safari and Internet Explorer, in addition to Chrome or Firefox.

You need to look out for the "add your location" box as it unveils the new addition in 65 different countries. We are pretty excited that it is set to launch another API to allow Twitter Places to be used with Twitter applications (like ours), so you may well see this feature cropping up in Tweasier soon too.

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The Tweasier Twitter Management Application launches in Beta

Well the time has finally arrived and Tweasier is entering the first stages of beta testing.

The idea for Tweasier came from an idea after I started blogging here specifically just about useful Twitter tools. The Tweasier blog started to grow in stature and popularity and I started to think that maybe a tool should be developed which has some really great features. I suppose you could say it’s because of you guys.

The application is only in beta testing (so please be gentle) but we are hoping you guys (its users) will help us find the nasty bugs so we can eradicate as many as possible before we launch this tool to the world.

The new Tweasier application is packed with helpful services, allowing Twitter users to do any of the following:

• Run, save and clone Twitter searches based on location, keywords and personal biographies so conversations can be monitored.
• Receive personalised email notifications informing the user about their activity within the Twittersphere
• Visit Tweasier’s fully equipped analytics suite – providing more than 30 different up-to-date statistics on any Twitter account. Some of the graphs and data can also be exported for use in future presentations or reports.
• Sort an account’s friends or followers by more than 20 different criteria such as: people that haven’t tweeted in the last 30 days, people that didn’t follow the user back and also prune your friends to clear an account up if necessary.
• Users can take a quick peek at Twitter conversations between two people to get both sides of the story.
• Users can read messages, tweet, direct message and even shorten long URLs using Tweasier’s dedicated Twitter client.
• Scheduled tweeting – users can write and save several tweets until later in the day
• Users can use Tweasier’s own in-house ranking system which easily shows whether a user is worth following or not

For those of you more social, you can like Tweasier on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or simply subscribe to the blog.

I hope you like Tweasier but if you have any questions, feel free to drop me or one of the team a line. If you would like an invite email me.

We will look forward to hearing what you guys think of it.

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Five cool ways to add tweets to your blog

If you are one of the millions of people active on Twitter then there is also a good chance that you may be creating content elsewhere on the interweb and committing your thoughts more fully to the blogosphere. If that is the case then you ought to consider using one of the many widgets available that enable your tweets to appear on your blog (or website for that matter). Not only is this aesthetically pleasing and gets readers involved in your tweets, it also helps strengthen your personal social media ecosystem – by this, I mean using one platform on which you are active to sign post traffic to another. So there you have it – this post was borne out of necessity to highlight some of the tools available that allow you to make your tweets show up on your blog. I hope this post highlights a few widgets from the basic, up to the more sophisticated.

Twitter

Twitter allows you to embed your tweets fairly easily by copying and pasting some HTML into your blog. If you’re just starting out in the blogging game, I would recommend you use this widget as it creates the code in a matter of seconds. Whilst, the Twitter option is functional, easy to use and offers some personalisation, it is perhaps less visually pleasing than its cooler rivals. However, simplicity is not necessarily a bad thing and for someone with an urge to create content, rather than get bogged down in the intricacies of code, you could do a lot worse than using the standardised Twitter widget. To get this quick bit of code, simply visit the Twitter Goodies site and choose from a profile widget, search widget, faves widget or list widget.

TwitStamp

TwitStamp is very much in the same vein as the standard Twitter widget in that it speedily offers you a choice of funky badges that displays your latest tweets. This app scores higher when it comes to personalisation in comparison to the Twitter widget, whilst retaining its user friendly feel. There are some other great features that let you play around with the badge’s size and background, as well as a handy TwitCard feature you should check out that incorporates your name, avatar, bio, latest tweet and number of followers.

Language is a Virus

This writing prompt (and somewhat unusually named) website offers hundreds of widgets that you can select by size, colour and style. If you are looking for something unusual that other people (probably) won’t have, then this site should be your first port of call. Whilst, there are many, many widgets which are not to my taste, the sheer breadth of designs is worthy of your attention. The main problem will be choosing just one. Again this site guides you through an easy step-by-step process and gives you some code at the end.

Tweetizen

Tweetizen is a slightly more complex widget as it incorporates tweets from particular groups. This is ideal for blogs with several authors or companies who have their employees tweeting for them. It’s fairly straightforward and produces a piece of embed code that you can add anywhere on your blog or website. In addition, you can even customize the look and feel of it by adding an extra stylesheet to override the default CSS stylings.

Tweet

In common with a lot of Twitter tools and apps, the best ones are often created by small teams of developers elsewhere. The beauty of opening up your API is that the crowd can take it on, change it and ultimately make it better. Tweet is another fine example of just that. This unobtrusive piece of JavaScript code enables you to do lots of things, way above and beyond just embedding your latest tweets. For instance, you can display tweets from a particular Twitter search, incorporate tweets from other accounts, as well as the automatic linking of #hashtags. Whilst, this code enables you to do all sorts of creative things, a decent understanding of coding basics is required.

This is a guest post from our good friend Ben Cotton you can read the original post here. Ben is currently employed by Edelman Digital, having previously worked in PR research, a professional cricket club and busy press office. You can find out more about Ben from his blog, Tweets or Linked In profile.

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Mentionmap: looks good, is useful

The hardest part of building your Twitter presence is finding your first few relevant friends amongst the millions of Twitterers, but never fear because the Tweasier team is here. The most useful tool I’ve come across to find your audience is Mentionmap; a visual mapping app which presents a users network based on who they @ in a handy spider diagram.

There are plenty of network mapping tools around but most base themselves on who your friends follow not who they @, the problem with that is many people can have thousands of followers but only ever talk to ten of them meaning knowing their whole network is useless. Mentionmap on the other hand highlights who a user @’s most often and who the next user in the network  @’s creating a full network twitterers engaged in regular conversation for you to follow.

This is great if your looking to find relevant networks quickly, you only need to know one user tweeting about your area of interest and mentionmap will unlock a full network of twitterers for you to follow and begin tweeting with at will.

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Streaming video straight to Twitter

I’ve been perusing the Tweasier archives and noticed a tool that I’m surprised we haven’t mentioned before. That tool is the Qik streaming video platform, which allows users to stream video straight from their smart phone to Twitter.

The set up is simple,  just sign up, download the Qik app, and get filming. Every time film starts rolling, a link to your Qik page will be automatically tweeted to your feed and your followers can see your video in real time. Your channel can also be shared via text, Facebook and YouTube and you can live chat with your viewers, making Qik a great way of sharing live video with your followers across every platform, not just Twitter.

Qik is completely free for personal use but paid packages are available if you want to use it commercially and you should check your phone’s data package or it could get expensive. Other than that have fun, you might want to avoid broadcasting your next big night out though.

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The official Promoted Tweets video

Here is the official video explaining promoted Tweets – it’s a simple short video that shows you how you can set them up and how they will appear. I have also included some text from the official Twitter announcement on how they will price them but if you want more information on promoted tweets click here.

How much will it cost to promote Tweets? Will advertisers use a cost-per-click (CPC) model or something else?

A. We will use a simple impression-based pricing model until we, and our partners, can better understand the value of promoting Tweets.  We haven’t decided on the right model going forward but we will be measuring multiple indicators of engagement such as Retweets, @replies, re-use of hashtags, avatar clicks, hashtag clicks, in-Tweet link clicks, views after Retweet and more.  We call these collective indicators “Resonance” and believe that over time a pricing model based on Resonance will be better tuned to the actual value of promoting a Tweet than simple cost per click or dollars per friend, fan or follower models.  We’ll know more after our initial launch and look forward to working with our advertising partners in refining our thinking around pricing and Resonance.

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Awesome UK General election Twitter monitoring websites

As the UK general election is fast approaching we UK voters are currently weighing up whether we should vote Labour, Conservative, or Liberal. Whilst we’ve been busy decoding politicians election policies a number of digital agencies have been busy creating social media microsites designed to monitor the buzz and tweets around the general election.

Firstly, before I get straight into giving you the low down on these Twitter general election websites I still haven’t quite decided who to vote for, although I’m leaning towards the Lib dems. These websites are a really great way for a undecided voter to canvas the opinion of their fellow Tweeters about what’s being said for each election candidate.

Tweetlection.co.uk

Tweetlection is the brain child of Leeds based digital agency Sense. Hat’s off to Sense because this is a really well thought out and designed tool. It reminded me of Google analytics by how I could analyse the social media data around each political party. I partially liked the top words section above each political party, delving into a party section will bring you in-depth analysis and data on the latest Tweets across the Twittersphere. Here you can specifically filter by Retweets, include or exclude keywords or search by gender.

Go on have a play for yourself!

Slapometer.com

Slapometer.com is the proud creation of London based digital agency Albion. Rather than focus on pure analytical insights and data, Albion have decided to put the fun back into voting by allowing you to slap a politician (depending on your own personal preference). Ask yourself this, did one of David Cameron’s policies strike you as crazy? Well…give him a slap to show your distaste in the matter.

It’s a very interesting site and very well put together. The Slaptistics page delves into the user generated data, currently David Cameron had the highest slaptistics at 50% of the slap for the first TV debate and racking up a total of 1.4 million slaps. The slapped most section in the stats is my personal favourite, an interesting fact from the site is that 62% of people slapped all three leaders!

10downingtweets.co.uk

10downingtweets, is the creation of London and Leeds based digital agency Twentysix digital. Interestingly enough it’s not just the major three parties tweets mentioned on this website, 10downingtweets also brings the tweets direct to you from the Green party, UKIP and believe or not the BNP.

10downingtweets is focused heavily on what the politicians are saying rather than the voters. However the homepage gives a nice overview of individual tweeters general election tweets.
The polls are a nice feature and there are some interesting stats from the voters, the website overall is extremely well designed and put together.

The politicians wish they had websites like these…

It just makes you think how good the UK political digital campaigns could of been if they had hired digital agencies to run their online marketing. Econsultancy recently did a post called Election memo to party leaders: Please sort out your terrible websites it’s a great read and it’s nice to laugh at such poorly thought out websites. (I only hope someone from each political party read it!)

Good to see Nick Clegg on Twitter (even though it’s managed by @davidangell his web officer) , I believe he’s a forward thinking politician. It’s really important for me as a voter that politician’s come and speak to me on my social networks because I’m sure not writing them a letter, I’d much rather Tweet my views and opinions.

If you’ve found some other websites that we’ve missed, we’d love to hear about them in the comments.

About this blog post
If you enjoyed reading this blog post, then you can take a look at Illiya’s other posts on his blog or follow him on Twitter.

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Guest Post Ben Cotton: The latest Tweet-cessory

This is a guest post from our good friend Ben Cotton. Ben is currently employed by Edelman Digital, having previously worked in PR research, a professional cricket club and busy press office. You can find out more about Ben from his blog, Tweets or Linked In profile.

Apologies for the awful title, but I was struggling to come up with another decent one. Some of the alternative suggestions I’ve had thrown at me from my wonderful friends and colleagues include ‘load of junk’, ‘pile of crap’ and something altogether unrepeatable. In fact, a lot of it was unrepeatable. The object which caused me to pen such an awful title and generated such outrage is the personalised Tweet Notebook I’ve just ordered.

To fill in the gaps…a Belgian company is offering people the chance to have their tweets committed to notepaper for $12. To be more precise, for your money you get a plain notepad with your tweets at the bottom. Admittedly, it does seem frivolous, indulgent even and dare I say it, a bit arrogant. But, it was the sheer novelty which immediately appealed to me – then came feelings of frivolity, indulgence and arrogance. Followed by the abuse. A lot of abuse.

However, I’ve tried to rationalise my purchase. I like the opportunism of the company. It’s a brilliantly simple idea. They’re taking something that is typically inexpensive and dull. Few things are more boring than a notepad – and they have turned it into something people will be willing to pay a lot more for.

I think this tweet-cessory (apologies) is geeky and cool in equal measures, but I also think it’s great to see your tweets being turned into something tangible rather than consigned to the bowels of Twitter search – never to be seen again.

The question is, at $12 a pad, will I use it sparingly or just start writing smaller?

P.S. For those on a budget you could always have a go yourself using Tweetbook.

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