Anatomy Of A Successful Tweet
by GUEST POSTER on APRIL 10, 2009
in TWITTER FOR BEGINNERS
Leo Dirr is a freelance writer. Follow him @UtahNewsGuy.
When I began using Twitter a short time ago, I had no idea how much strategy could be involved in a simple tweet. You only get 140 characters, for crying out loud. How much thought could go into that, honestly?
A lot. And once I started to figure that out, my tweets got a lot more traction. I’d like to tell you about my most successful tweet to date and the strategy behind it.
Let’s begin with the tweet itself:
Will newspapers survive? Interviews with @typeamom, @pgillin, @standardex, @atompkins, @pottsmark http://tinyurl.com/ctxufw #journchat
Pretty sweet, huh? Now, let’s break it down:
Headline: Will newspapers survive?
That’s a decent headline because it conveys the story’s meaning in a small amount of space. It leaves me enough characters to accomplish my other goals.
Retweet bait: Interviews with @typeamom, @pgillin, @standardex, @atompkins, @pottsmark
In this story about the newspaper industry, I interviewed several industry experts. Many of them have Twitter accounts. How convenient! So, I included their Twitter handles in the tweet.
This improves the odds of three things:
1. The people named in the tweet will read the tweet.
2. The people named in the tweet will retweet it to their followers.
3. Their followers will read the tweet and possibly retweet it.
Linkyloo: http://tinyurl.com/ctxufw
The link is essential if you want anybody to read the content on your blog or web site. But it’s also worth noting that I used a tiny url. Tastes great, less filling.
Hashtag: #journchat
I added that hashtag mostly for fun. It accomplishes two things, really.
1. It might help the tweet get found by somebody who does a search specifically for that hashtag.
2. It helps define the Twitter community the tweet belongs to. People interested in journalism-related discussions might be more inclined to pay attention to a tweet marked #journchat.
Or they might not.
But again, this was my most successful tweet yet.
Strategery! That’s just fun to say.
