How to Write a Tweet That Gets Retweeted

“Please retweet” is one of the most commonly used phrases in a successful retweet

Re-tweets happen on Twitter when you write a funny, interesting, or share-worthy 140 character tweet. As online marketers who want a solid social media strategy, we thrive on re-tweets. Even if we only have a small following on Twitter, a re-tweet can help spread your links and articles to millions of other people on Twitter.

Dan Zarella did a study of his Twitter account (of which has 24k followers) to discover which words in his tweets gauged the most re-tweets. As it turns out, “you”, “twitter”, “please”, “retweet” and “post” came in at the top. But what’s more interesting is that the phrase “please retweet” was also in his top list, coming in at #11.

As it turns out, just asking for a retweet is one of the best ways to get someone to retweet an article or link you’ve posted. You see it all the time in the form of “Pls RT” or “RT?” or even more aggressively “PLEASE RT!”. This “ask” for a retweet can sometimes prompt users to retweet before they’ve even seen what you’ve posted.

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Zarella also notes in a guest post on Copyblogger.com, other common calls to action that frequently occur in the most ReTweeted Tweets:

• Check out…
• Follow this person
• Please vote
• Help me
• Questions, e.g. “What do you think of…”

He also deduces the types of articles that get retweeted the most. You’ll notice that most of these article offer a big benefit to the user, much like a well-written email subject line:

• “How Tos” and Instructional Content
• News, especially breaking news
• Warnings (like the DM phishing scam)
• Freebies and Contests

So according to this research, what would be a great Twitter subject line? How about this:

“How to Write a Tweet that Gets Retweeted” [link here] – Please RT!” – Clever right?