5 Ways to make your Twitter posts go #viral
This weekend saw me talk about #ThatDress shared by many major celebrities and also see a nobody get 18,000+ re-tweets.
Randomness
It’sO FactO – At Indiana University, Bloomington, researchers compared 120 million actual retweets with a random computer model and found very little difference in the way ideas propagated. The theory is that the limited attention span of Twitter users prevents them from evaluating every tweet, but once something is retweeted a few times, it starts to be seen by more people, and eventually it goes viral.
But how….
Emotions
Be funny, be happy, be angry or snarky or sarcastic. Be a real, emotionally-driven person and connect with other Twitter users on an emotional level.
The most viral driven emotions however are anger and shock. If you want to go viral provoke. People share, comment, bring in others etc when they get angry. I don’t recommend being a jackass but if 15 mins of fame is for you then follow the wise words of 50 Cent.
if they hate then let ‘em hate and watch the money pile up
Timing
If you can only tweet twice a day, do it around 9am and 4pm. Your tweets will be more likely to be seen and, therefore, shared by the most amount of people – Twitter Rookie
If you are English speaking and post in English chances are that a large number of your followers will be from the USA, regardless of where in the world you are. EST is 3 hours ahead of PST. (9AM EST is 6AM PST). Tweet often. Yes pay attention to morning before work, lunchtime (12-2pm), evenings after work, and before bed time etc, But – for example – i am from the UK and most of my followers are from The US. For me Timing matters least of these tips but is certainly note worthy. I Tweet often and i even share the same tweet 3/4 times as day, at roughly 3 hour intervals. Reason – I have 58,000+ followers. These people obviously wake up, go to work, have lunch and go to bed all at the same time! So i clearly want them to read my tweets every time they are online….. IF ONLY! People do live different lives and yes there are clear spikes when people come online, but not everyone will see each tweet you send out, only a small percentage of your followers actually will. (unless you are one of just 20 people they follow).
Influence
The more followers you have and the more people you follow, the greater your influence on Twitter – Twitter Rookie
If you want influence fast. Follow and interact with people who already have it – Sorry to encourage this. If you follow 200 people each with 200 follows and interact regularly with those who are online, AND they retweet everything… you can assume
5% (10) are online x 5% (10) of their audience is online = 100 impressions at least - with some ripples. Lets just say a couple hundred post impressions.
BUT
If you follow 200 people who on average have 20,000 followers… same equation for ease.
5% (10) online X 5% (1,000) of their audience is online = 10,000 impressions with even more ripples because they are influential, 50,000+ impression.
Twitter is a ‘broadcast platform’ so use a bigger megaphone.
Words
Be inclusive, not exclusive – Use words such “you,” “your” and “because”, and ask questions (?) Involve your followers, be engaging and spark a discussion.
Use pictures
A picture speaks a thousand words
On a medium where everyone is limited to 140 characters and where everything shared is predominately text, those that stand a chance of standing out are pictures.
Ask politely – Just 12% of tweets that don’t ask to be shared are retweeted, but 51% of people who ask get their posts shared. Make sure, however, that you have something for people to share. Include a link to your site or blog – 70% of all retweeted posts have a link in them.
If you are using Twitter for self promotion here’s some quick tips – Use words such as “NEW” and “EXCLUSIVE” in capitals, Use phases people love like “HOW TO” or numbers “7 BEST”, “15 Ways”, “37 different”, use short hashtags so people that use search can find you #marketing #socialmedia #viral may be ones to accompany this post.