How To Increase Brand Awareness With Retweets On Twitter

The Pew Research Center estimates that Twitter now reaches 18 percent of US Internet users, up from only 8 percent in 2010. Further, 33 percent of users follow at least one brand, and 67 percent are more likely to buy from brands they follow, according to Mediabistro. Small businesses have also caught onto the Twitter phenomenon, using the social network to grow their brands and gain new customers in the process.
The effectiveness of small business Twitter campaigns is directly tied to the number of followers you have. The best way to get more followers is to get retweets of your tweets. Though celebrities and athletes with millions of followers get thousands of retweets on any mindless drivel they publish, small businesses do not have the same luxury. There is simple science behind getting retweets, with most of it centred around cleverness and timing.

Retweeable vs Unretweetable Words

A 2013 Statcounters/Eircom B&A survey found that nearly 13 percent of participants who had recently left Facebook did so due to the shallowness of conversations. Facebook users are notorious for telling their "friends" what they had for breakfast, how frustrated they are while in a traffic jam and, of course, the proverbial "goodnight Facebook" salutation. These types of status updates on Twitter are the least likely to be retweeted or even acknowledged.

iAcquire on Twitter uses its account to promote blog posts. The SEO company tweets links to its blog postings, and utilises relevant #hashtags to broaden its reach. Author and blogger Dan Zarrella analysed the text of more than 30 million tweets. Words such as "Twitter" "media" "free" "social" "blog" and "please" were among the top 20 retweeted words. Contrarily, "lol" "work" "home" "bed" and "night" were among the least retweeted words. Zarrella also has a retweetable word finder tool that can help you phrase tweets in a way that maximizes their retweetability.


Length and Timing

Tweets are limited by the 140 character limit. When tweeting links to blogs and other media, make sure to use a URL-shortening tool to save space. Any commentary you preface the tweet with should be short and concise. Many people want to add their own comment to a tweet that they retweet. If you utilize all 140 characters, that means the retweeter has to edit your message just to write his. The extra steps can cause them to simply skip retweeting it at all.

Not only is the text of the tweet important, but also the timing. Bit.ly, a URL shortening and tracking company, revealed that tweeting between the hours of 1:00 pm and 3 pm Eastern time returns the highest click rate among all time slots. The best time to tweet is during business hours Monday through Friday, with Wednesday afternoons having the highest click times of all days. Avoid sending tweets after 8 pm and on weekends (unless of course you're a college or NFL football-oriented business).


Know Your Audience

Twitter users do not necessarily represent the population at large. The Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 28 percent of US Twitter users are African American, and 28 percent are Latino. The study also found that nearly half of all US Twitter users are aged 29 or younger. Ethnicity and race can be sensitive subjects when it comes to advertising. Yahoo and Mindshare, who jointly conducted a study on ethnic marketing, advises small business to feature diversity in their ads, to be authentic and avoid stereotypes.