The Sweet Tweet Of Success - Getting Your Content Retweeted

Dan Zarrella is well known for his scientific study of social media and those of us wishing to harness the power of Twitter will find this infographic of significant interest.

A couple of key points:

• Focus on news communications and provide a link back to expanded content
• Be proactive in asking people to retweet what you have posted

There is also strong evidence that use of Twitter boosts your search rankings on major engines. These social signals are used to rank regular search results according to Danny Sullivan.

Other pointers for the Sweet Tweet of Success:

• Build your Followers base but remember that the quality of your following also counts, as the above Matt Cutts video explains. 
• A retweet by a third party will be more valuable when it comes to search engine ranking, than one you retweet yourself 
• Content relevance is important so if your tweets are on a theme or topic you will be more successful in achieving search engine visibility.

New Scientist recommends that you use don't use exclamation marks but do use question marks, as they pose questions which others are more likely to pass on.

Strong and positive words in your tweet are more likely to be re-tweeted than negative words.  There is a reluctance to pass on rude or inflammatory language.

Paradoxically, if your use a negative emoticon in a tweet such as :-(  you stand a greater chance of having it passed on than a emotive one such as :-) .

If you content is in the broader public interest then it will have a greater chance of success and this ties in with the Dan Zarrella recommendations above.

And the old adage of bad news travelling fastest holds true with Twitter. Bad or unpleasant news gets  re-tweeted more frequently as does that which expresses strong sentiments around a topic.  A tweet cloud related to the topic 'Norway' demonstrates this.

And if you want to find out how far your tweets are reaching trying using this tool.  You may be surprised to learn just how many people have received your content.