Daily Dose – Social Media Tip of the Day – Who gives a tweet?
Did you know that only about a third of tweets are worth reading?
This is according to a study conducted by researchers at Georgia Tech, MIT and Carnegie Mellon.
To figure out what people like to read on Twitter, the research team created a fun website called “Who Gives a Tweet?” The site got Twitter users to anonymously rate tweets sent by people they follow. In return for participating, the users got feedback on their own tweets.
The study found that people actively liked only 36% of the tweets, with 25% getting a firm dislike and 39% getting a score of neutral/ambivalent.
This study is valuable because it categorized the unpopular tweets and gave Twitterers like me a roadmap for improvement.
In this post I have laid out some helpful tips gleaned from the study in the hopes of making Twitter a better place for everyone!
What not to tweet
- Tweets relating to mood or energ level (“I’m pissed off.” “So tired, didn’t get enough sleep.”)
- Tweets describing boring, everyday activities (“Had a great sandwich.” “Just got on the subway.”)
- Tweets that are “old news” – sometimes just a few hours old is an eternity in the Twitterverse!
- #Tweets #that #are #chock #full #of #hashtags. #superannoying
- Automated tweets from third party sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, Klout, and numerous other sites.
- Tweets that are overly negative and whiny.
Short and sweet tips for tweeting
- It seems that self-promotion is much more acceptable on Twitter than we thought. Most of us working in social media understand the 80/20 rule – only talk about yourself/sell/self-promote 20% of the time. Despite this “golden rule” of content creation, tweets that share information, such as linking to a blog post or a story that you wrote, are preferable than others.
- Information sharing is key!
- Instead of simply retweeting a link, add a short opinion about what you are sharing: “This makes me mad.” “Great post!” “Helpful info.”
- One great idea from the study found that tweets that “tease” content get the most clicks – don’t give away the milk for free! Example: “What happens when people stop using Facebook altogether? Find out here.”
What else would you add? Please post your Comments below or email julia@jcsocialmarketing.com – thank you for reading!