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My research has shown that the number of followers exposed to a Tweet has only a weak correlation to the number of ReTweets it gets, indicating that the content of the tweet may be more important than the user posting it. To begin to understand the key characteristics of highly-ReTweetable content I took a look at the top 10,000 (out of over 158,000 total) most ReTweeted tweets in my ReTweet Mapping database.
I broke down the most common words and phrases in these highly ReTweeted posts and cherry picked through the list (ignoring very common words) to uncover what I think are 20 of the most ReTweetable words and phrases. Browsing through the list below should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of content gets ReTweeted the most.
Some highlights from the list:
The word “you” while very common, seems to occur especially often in ReTweets, indicating that if you’re talking to “me” I’m more likely to ReTweet it.
Its really not surprising that “Twitter” ranks high, but this is a good reminder that self-reference is always good for buzz in social media.
Again we see “please” and “please ReTweet” (“please rt” also ranked highly). I’ve written about this a few times, but its hard to overstate how important it is to ask for the ReTweet when you want it, calls to action work.
The word “free” seems to remind is to provide value, especially value at no cost to our readers, as does the word help.
The occurrence of the word “help” could indicate either a tweet that promises to help you or a request for help. Whichever it is, it reinforces both providing value and calls to action.
“Social Media” as a phrase ranks high, so again, don’t be afraid to tweet about tweeting, blogging, networking, digging, etc.
The number “10” made a surprise appearance high on the list. Top 10s are popular, always have been and always will be, don’t forget it. The word “top” also made an appearance on the list.
“New Blog Post” is the common prefix used when a person tweets about, well, a new blog post to their site. That this ranks so highly tells us that tweeting your posts is a very smart thing to do.
| Occurrences | Word or Phrase |
| 1364 | you |
| 1138 | |
| 701 | please |
| 598 | retweet |
| 397 | post |
| 389 | blog |
| 352 | social |
| 306 | free |
| 304 | media |
| 269 | help |
| 262 | please retweet |
| 262 | great |
| 237 | social media |
| 229 | 10 |
| 222 | follow |
| 187 | how to |
| 165 | top |
| 164 | blog post |
| 128 | check out |
| 118 | new blog post |
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