Being retweeted can help extend your online presence and lead to increased traffic, followers and influence. If you’re struggling to get more retweets, these 8 simple steps can help you maximize the potential for more retweets.
1. Add a Twitter Button to Your Website
This is one of the simple and most effective ways to get more retweets. There are plenty of unofficial tweet buttons available, but the official Twitter version is likely your best bet.
By installing the official Twitter tweet button on your website or blog, you make it easy for readers to retweet any of the content on your page.
2. Schedule your Tweets
There are a variety of apps that can help you schedule your tweets so you are sending them out during peak times of the day. By using a tweet scheduler, it will appear that you are sending out tweets live when you actually don’t need to manually be there to do so.
This will help ensure you are getting your content out there during the most active times of the day, even if you aren’t physically there to tweet live. By sending tweets out during peak hours, you are much more likely to have your tweets noticed and retweeted by others.
3. Retweet other People
A great way to get noticed and share information with your followers is to start retweeting other people. Now, you don’t want to do this with the expectation of retweets of your content in return – but it does increase the chances that a person you retweet will return the favor.
The old saying “you get what you give” certainly applies here.
4. Ask for a Retweet
Sometimes, the simplest way to get what you want is to ask for it! While you can start small by asking friends and family members to retweet what you post, don’t be afraid to put “Please RT” at the end of your tweet – it actually can work.
The trick here is not to overdo it and constantly ask people to retweet your content.
5. Network with Others
Start networking now to build your followers and develop relationships with others in the community. Networking is the key to all successful facets of a business, and if you want to get more retweets, you need to build a network of dedicated followers.
By getting involved with your followers and those who you follow, you are increasing your chances of getting retweeted.
6. Be Persistent
Success comes with persistence, so it’s important to stay active on Twitter and online so you aren’t forgotten. Keep posting valuable content, follow other users, and make sure to actively engage in the community on a regular basis.
By being persistent, you are staying visible on other users’ radars, which is an important way to get more retweets.
7. Share “Valuable” Content
We hear this all of the time, but what does valuable content actually mean? While there’s no hard definition for this (value means different things to different people) most can agree that posts need to be interesting, informative, entertaining and/or newsworthy in order to be considered valuable.
When posting content, make sure it’s of value to your followers. If it’s relevant and interesting to them, they are much more likely to retweet.
8. Make it Easy for Others to Retweet
No one wants to edit your tweet in order to retweet it, so if it’s too long most people will not bother reposting your content. Solve this problem by leaving at least 20 characters at the end of every tweet to make it easy for others to retweet your content.
With a bit of patience and dedication, you can implement these ways to get more retweets and watch the number of times your content gets retweeted soar.
“Ask for a Retweet”
So obvious, but I’ve never done it!
I’ll give it a try tonight.
Like I said in the post, it’s definitely something you want to pull out when need be. Nothing worse than looking desperate by saying “Please RT!” at the end of every tweet.
Good list! I just shared several of these same things when talking about promoting a blog or podcast with Twitter.
My favorite Twitter tool is Buffer, which is easy, automatic, scheduled tweets at the times I choose.
Thanks for the comment Daniel – the Buffer App is something that I’m looking into as I hear more about it.
I have been using buffer app and love it. It also helps spread out tweets as well so I don’t overwhelm followers’ feeds when I run across lots of good content. And as you mention, they are timed at peak times despite that I often have time to check twitter and read very early or very late.
I’ve heard a lot about Buffer, but really haven’t taken the time to check it out. In fact, I had a friend of mine show me inside his account earlier this week. Perhaps you’ve pushed me over the edge and I’ll give it a run tonight!
Great tips, Brian. One thing that I’ve recently started doing is tweeting quotes, and have to say it works pretty well.
-Dev
Completely agree – in fact I cited Brainy Quotes a while back as a place to find tweetable content.
I just add “read, share n Retweet” at the end of my tweets of my Blog. I’ve also installed a floating social box on my blog posts.
Great post Brian, especially love your number 6! Being persistent on Twitter took me a long time to understand, yet it is the most important aspect. Thanks for emphasizing! Buffered your post for sure.
Nice to have people coach you along the way. Thank you.
Great post Brian very helpful information indeed, I was wondering if it’s wise to use some of these tools I see to get mote tweeter followers? I think it’s like just like anything in life, if you want results it will take hard work.
Correct – RT’ing other peoele’s tweets will also get you more followers. It’s actually a combination of RT’ing and providing valuable content, so in theory, it’s killing two birds with one stone.
8 awesome ways to get traffic from Twitter by RT, thanks!
I tried #4 a couple of times in the last 6 month and in both cases about 80% of the people I asked for a tweet kindly helped me and I am grateful for that.
This can work, but just as you said, the trick is not to constantly ask people for favors.
For me what works best is sharing other people’s content, engaging with them and making it easy for my readers to share the articles. If the articles are good enough, they will share them.
Completely agree with you Eugen – I typically don’t like to ask for RT’s, as I believe if the content warranted it folks would already be doing it. But there are cases when I fully believe it’s warranted and should be done.
I was about to ask for a good post scheduler until I scrolled through the comments, but when should I schedule them for? Is peak time around lunch time?
It really depends. I normall shoot for 9:00 am CST and then again later afternoon.
Zac, when you join Buffer, they explain how to use SocialBro to determine your best times to tweet for your followers.
I set my tweets to go out every thirty minutes between somewhere around noon ET through 6:00 p.m. I made it thirty minutes because I sometimes share a lot.
I also think letting know people what’s on your mind, with a tweet that hits home to others, can generate tons of retweets.
I use Crowdbooster to monitor my twitter activity and schedule tweets if need (plus they suggest great times to tweet as well as point out new influential followers). The stats and graphs are the best – they even tell you the cumulative followers the tweet was seen by.
Last week my most popular tweet had 17 Retweets, 8 Replies, and 36,802 Impressions.