The Anatomy of the Perfect Tweet

We’ve all read them—the perfect tweets. They make us laugh, they make us smile, they make us think. They engage us, even though we are scrolling through an endless feed of tweet after tweet. If you want to write a tweet that actually engages with your audience, it needs to have a few key factors. Remember, the value of your tweet is in its ability to attract as much attention as possible, as quickly as possible. The shelf life on this social media is incredibly short, so it needs to be immediate and engaging. Here’s what makes a truly great tweet:

It Is Engaging

One of the best things about Twitter is that your reach extends beyond the people who actually follow you. If someone who follows you actually likes, favorites, or retweets your tweet, you have instantly connected with all of that follower’s followers. This means that the main goal of any tweet should be to attract as much audience participation as possible. While it might be great for the people who follow you to interact with you on other media, one of your biggest goals on Twitter should be to amass a following. Engaging tweets do that.

So what makes a tweet engaging? Controversy, questions, and numbers. People like to hear opinions that affirm their own or combat opinions that go against theirs. If your tweet is controversial, more people are likely to engage with it. If you ask a direct question of your followers, this is another great way to get them to interact with you. Numbers, like statistics, are an additional way to provide value that the audience is likely to either retweet or at least slow down long enough to read and favorite.

It Is Relevant

Relevance has two aspects that you should be concerned with. First, a tweet is relevant if it is meaningful for your audience and second, a tweet is relevant if it is current. Tweeting about current events is one of the best ways to lengthen your reach on Twitter, especially if you are using the appropriate hashtags. This could be more difficult for companies and defined brands than it is for personalities, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to what’s trending on Twitter and make an attempt to get in on that action. Of course, only include a hot hashtag if it is actually relevant to your tweet. There is nothing more annoying that scrolling past a tweet that is included in the stream only because the person used a completely irrelevant hashtag, just to get more eyes on what they have to say. Look at hashtags that are trending on Twitter and consider setting up a Google Alert for news about your industry so you can always have a fresh stream of news to tweet about that will be relevant to your followers.

Use a Visual

Like all social media, Twitter is becoming highly visual. The platform is even optimized now to favor those who tweet out a picture along with their text. While you used to just get a link that would open up in an entirely different page when someone clicked on it if you tried to include a picture, those pictures are now integrated into the stream. If you use a picture, your tweet is going to get more screen time than tweets that do not include visuals and they are also going to be more attractive. Try to get a feel for your audience and what types of images they might want to see. Some will like infographics, while videos might work better for others. Some audiences might actually prefer no pictures and just text, but if yours does like a visual, do not be afraid to use one.

Make Sure Your Website is Twitter-friendly

What does that mean? It means that when someone wants to tweet out a link to your website, any traffic that comes to your website from that link is welcomed. This means that your website should load quickly, with special attention being paid to how quickly it loads on mobile devices (which is how most people access Twitter and therefore how most people would be viewing your website when redirected from a link on Twitter). If you want people to tweet out quotes from your blog content, make sure that you include a “tweet this quote” tool to make it exceptionally easy.