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You have a Twitter account, and you’re following some people. Some of those people are now following you back and you’re thinking “great, now what?” Or maybe you saw my Viral Tweet Test and are wondering how to accomplish the same effect for your content.
In my Viral Content Sharing Survey I uncovered a bunch of information that could prove useful to you if you’re trying to go viral via Twitter.
First, understand that as gregarious early-adopters Twitter users a very infectious vector to seed your viral content into. Twitter users tend to share content more often and with more people that the average user (in both one-to-one and especially in one-to-many ways). This means that it’s probably a good idea to Tweet your new content, and include “Tweet this” buttons to make sharing easier.
Next we can look at where Twitter users tend to share content from. Here we see that they prefer spreading content from blogs and social news sites (rather than mainstream news, a favorite of non-Twitter users). If you want your content to go viral, don’t do a press release or use a PR agency; post it to your blog and get it submitted to a social news site.
Lastly, determine what kind of content they like to share most often. The data says that compared to non-Twitter users (who share mostly humor) Twitter users prefer sharing news, opinion and even instructional content.
For data on more user profiles, check out the rest of my Viral Content Sharing Survey.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Amazing research Dan! Twitter and the other microblogging platforms seem to be in the growing pains of getting figured out in regards to self-promotion and content distribution. Good stuff man, keep up the great work.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Kudos, a perfect understanding of how to gain some traction on Twitter. I think that your content MUST provide some value or start a conversation to reach tweeters.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Fascinating material here Dan! What did you see in comparing to non-twits to infrequent twits? Also, how do you define a ‘frequent twit’?
November 4th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
good to see some stats behind the oft discussed “soft” side of social content.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Hi Dan,
Great post. Especially liked how you went over what sources are most likely to be spread as well as the topics. Glad to see forum posts get spread enough to be included in the graph and of course I knew blogs would be there in full effect.
Thanks for the enjoyable reaed.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
These stats and figures would be very helpful for those who are planning their link campaigns on Twitter..anyways thanks a lot for sharing it with is!
November 7th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Wow! Who needs compete.com when we’ve got Dan Z.
Question though…as Gab brought up: can you define frequent twit? I.e. more than 5/day? more than 50/day?
November 7th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
@gab & @gmoney I’ll double check, but anyone who answered that they used twitter once a day or more was considered a frequent twit.
November 9th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I don’t even want to know how long it took you to compile this information!
November 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Twitter is an excellent tool for the marketers who can use it correctly, this means providing high value not sales messages.