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AspDrone:
Do your tweets get noticed?

Are you getting enough engagement on Twitter?
Twitter’s true value is in its engagement. Unless
people are engaging with you on Twitter, you’re
wasting your time.
In this article I’ll share 10 tweeting techniques
that lead to better engagement.

#1: Keep Tweets Under 110 Characters
Twitter’s legendary character restriction seems
short, but if you’re maxing out your character
count, your tweets are too long.
Shorter tweets with around 110 characters get
17% higher engagement, and there’s a reason for
that. When you leave room in a tweet, it makes it
easier for people to retweet you and add their
own commentary.
Learn 10 tips for increasing engagement on
Twitter.
Jerry Low says:
If you are using all 140 characters in your tweet,
your followers will need to edit your tweets before
they can add in theirs and retweet. And, that’s not
cool. People are lazy. Tweets that need extensive
editing work simply get fewer retweets. Ideally, you
should limit your tweets to between 80–110
characters.

#2: Tweet During Daytime Hours
The Twittersphere is active during the 11-12
hours of daytime in your audience’s time zone.
Between 8am and 7pm, your tweets will have
30% higher interaction . (To find out exactly
when your audience is most active , you can use
the free tool from Tweriod .)
Be mindful of where your audience lives. Image:
Shutterstock.
That means you must keep your target audience
in mind and adjust your timing as needed . If
your company’s social media person is in
Bangalore catering to a West Coast USA
audience, she will need to adjust or schedule her
tweets accordingly.

#3: Tweet on Saturday and Sunday
Weekends are not the time to take a break from
Twitter. If you want engagement, schedule
tweets for Saturday and Sunday. According to
the data, engagement is 17% higher on the
weekends than it is on weekdays.
Salesforce’s research determined that there is an
inverse relationship between brands that tweet
on the weekend and the engagement rates on
the weekend.
Weekends aren’t the time to take a Twitter break.
Image Shutterstock.
But doesn’t this data conflict with the point
above, regarding tweeting during working hours?
Not exactly. As the data crunchers observed, the
daytime tweet engagement is high even during
weekends. Salesforce reported ,
When brands tweet during “busy hours” (8am–
7pm), they receive 30% higher engagement than
tweets that fall during “non-busy hours” (8pm–
7am). This even includes tweets published on
Saturday and Sunday.

#4: Share Images
Twitter’s rich Tweets give you higher levels of
engagement for images and videos (e.g., Vine
videos ). You can get a 150% increase in
retweets just by including images .
Buffer conducted an A/B test of tweets with
pictures (A) and tweets without pictures (B). In
each test, tweets with pictures won by a huge
margin.
The Buffer Guide to A/B Testing: http:///
Yo52ZBpmNs pic.twitter.com/lK5ubCNecO
— Buffer (@buffer) April 11, 2014
Now sold on the idea of using images, Buffer is
toying with the ratio of image to non-image
tweets
. They’ve settled on a ratio of 70/30 (pictures/
text).
In-stream images aren’t anything new, but few
users are making the most of the feature. It’s a
lot easier to pop a few words into a tweet than
to use images. However, if it’s engagement you
want, you can’t afford to ignore the data.

#5: Ask for Retweets
People are understandably shy about asking for
retweets. In fact, less than 1% of brands have
asked for a retweet. This is a huge missed
opportunity.
When you clearly ask your followers for a
retweet, you have a good chance of getting one .
Salesforce reports that asking results in 12 times
more retweets.
Follow @LFCUSA today & you could win this
signed Brendan Rodgers home shirt! Please
Retweet pic.twitter.com/GFKobEVx9y
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) July 27, 2014
Here’s a tip: Make sure to spell out the word
retweet in its entirety , rather than using the
abbreviation RT . The retweet rate for “retweet”
requests is 23 times higher than the engagement
rate for “RT” requests.
I would encourage caution, though. Don’t
bombard your audience with constant requests to
spread your message .

#6: Use Hashtags
Hashtags double your engagement rate —they are
their own implicit call to action. Plus, they create
higher visibility on Twitter.
What surprises me is that only 24% of tweets
contain hashtags. I would caution you to limit
yourself to two hashtags per tweet .
5 Ways to Improve Social Sharing on Your
Blog http:///N7XoC0SVfa by @
MelACulbertson #SocialMedia #Sharing
— SocialMediaExaminer (@smexaminer) July
26, 2014
Tweets that use more than two hashtags have a
17% drop in engagement. You don’t want that to
happen.
Stay in tune with trending or industry-specific
hashtags to make sure you’re cashing in on a
valuable source of engagement.

#7: Include Links
Using metrics from Buddy Media, Salesforce
reports that 92% of all Twitter interaction
(retweeting, replying, etc.) happens when readers
click links. In fact, tweets with links get way
more retweets—86% more, according to
research!
Links and hashtags make it easy for others to
interact with your tweets.
Since tweets with links have higher engagement
metrics, you’d think sophisticated marketers
would be using links a lot more. Surprisingly, the
percentage of tweets with links is around 36%
(compared with 25% in 2010 ). Clearly we need to
tweet links more often.
How often? Twitter whiz Dan Zarrella’s analysis
suggests you include links in 60-80% of your
tweets as the “sweet spot for retweets.”

#8: Stay Away From Lifestyle Tweets
While celebrities can get away with tweeting
about their personal life, brands cannot. Twitter
is less of a personal-life journal and more of a
professional marketing platform. Be real, but
don’t be banal .
Dan Zarrella compiled a list of the top 20 least
engaging words on Twitter. These words—such
as work, home, watching, tired and tomorrow —are
nauseatingly narcissistic.
Your followers aren’t interested in your personal
actions. Few people are going to engage with a
tweet that declares that you’re bored or are
going to bed.

#9: Use Strong Calls to Action
Zarrella also listed the most retweeted words,
which have a high innate sense of engagement
and most are calls to action. Words like please
retweet, help, follow and how to are focused on
the reader of the tweet rather than on the
sender of the tweet.
Your followers are much more likely to interact if
they are the focus on your tweet and you’re
clearly asking for an action.

#10: Send One to Four Tweets a Day
There is a mistaken belief that the more you
tweet, the more ROI you’ll get from Twitter.
Salesforce data shows you can get more
engagement by tweeting less.
Actually, tweeting too often can result in very
poor engagement. This is particularly true for
brands, which need to be careful about coming
on too strong with their marketing.
To up your engagement, constrain your tweeting .
While you should actively respond to DMs and @
s , you don’t need to spew forth multiple tweets
all day long.

Conclusion
These 10 powerful Twitter tactics will help you
regain momentum on Twitter. By implementing
these data-backed actionable tips, you’ll be able
to create a compelling presence on Twitter in a
very short amount of time . www.socialmediaexaminer.com/twitter-tactics-to-increase-engagement/