Snow + Twitter Hosted Pic + Short n Sweet: The Secret to Resort Retweet Glory
Gregg Blanchard /
For the Stash this week, I took a social media route slant on a email lesson I learned a few months ago. Specifically, that when your subject line is long or short, you get higher opens. In the middle is this strange in-between spot where performance clearly dips.
Turns out, the same held true for the length of tweets and the number of retweets that resulted.
Using that as my jumping off point, I set out to find what the common traits were for the most retweeted resort content. The only rule I set for myself was that whatever I found had to be supported by data from at least 100 tweets.
LENGTH
As I mentioned, I first found a basic correlation between length and RT rate.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| 1-35 | 0.041 % | 1,451 |
| 36-70 | 0.038 % | 4,890 |
| 71-105 | 0.034 % | 6,573 |
| 106-140 | 0.030 % | 11,598 |
LINKS
Next, I took a look at various types of links included in tweets.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| FB Autotweet | 0.065 % | 4,750 |
| 0.038 % | 1,270 | |
| Twitter Pictures | 0.036 % | 1,723 |
| YouTube Videos | 0.035 % | 410 |
| BIT.ly | 0.033 % | 949 |
| No Link | 0.032 % | 11,435 |
| Any Link | 0.031 % | 12,343 |
| HT.ly | 0.011 % | 138 |
HASHTAGS
Then, the use of one or many hashtags.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| At least 5 | 0.031 % | 198 |
| At least 4 | 0.030 % | 542 |
| At least 3 | 0.028 % | 1,269 |
| At least 2 | 0.027 % | 2,828 |
| At least 1 | 0.026 % | 7,348 |
MENTIONS
Same for @ mentions.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| At least 1 | 0.020 % | 10,453 |
| At least 2 | 0.017 % | 2,984 |
| At least 3 | 0.016 % | 734 |
| At least 4 | 0.016 % | 268 |
| At least 5 | 0.015 % | 135 |
WORDS
I also found a few of the most retweeted words.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| inch/” | 0.061 % | 553 |
| weather | 0.046 % | 526 |
| snow | 0.042 % | 7,441 |
| rail | 0.043 % | 1,175 |
| $ | 0.044 % | 827 |
COMBOS
Finally, I tried to find the most effective combinations.
| criteria | rt rate | tweets |
| twitter picture + “snow” + < 70 | 0.157 % | 102 |
| “inch” + “snow” + < 70 | 0.147 % | 101 |
| facebook link + “snow” + < 70 | 0.106 % | 100 |
| “snow” + NO mentions + < 70 | 0.096 % | 745 |
| instagram + “snow” + < 70 | 0.065 % | 90 |
Yes, I know, the last one had fewer than 100 tweets, it was my only exception. Also notice that, despite having a bad rap, Facebook autotweets actually get a pretty hefty number of retweets.
So, want a lot of retweets? Keep it short, include a Twitter hosted picture, and talk about snow.