How to Write Retweetable Tweets

This is an exceptional article looking at something I hadn't paid much attention to before. It's about formatting your tweets to get the most retweets out of them. It includes things that should be a no-brainer but, admittedly, I'd never even thought of, like keeping them short enough so that a user can retweet without editing the original tweet to fit 140 characters. Brilliant!

You’ve heard about “sticky content.” Back in the days of Web 1.0 it was what made folks stick around on your website. The idea was they would stay a while, read every word and then buy whatever you were selling. (This turned out to be a fallacy, but that’s a different post.) Microblogging demands that you create a different kind of content. Let’s call it “slippery.” That means 140-character bursts that are so compelling they slip away immediately and are repeated by those following you. And as everyone knows, the more you are retweeted, the more followers you get, as your bon mots are passed along from one person to another.

If you’re using Twitter (Twitter) for business as a way to promote your brand, products or services, it’s even more important that you write retweetable tweets. “Me, me, me” never works. People care about how you can provide value, so how can you be interesting or provocative, and stand out in the increasingly cluttered Twittersphere? Here are five simple ways to make your 140-character pronouncements highly retweetable.
1. Always Include a Link

Link to a blog post, a news article, a video, or a photo – something that expands on what you’re saying. In other words, learn to tell the whole story by pointing with a link to an important missing piece. You’ll want to use a URL shortener like bit.ly (bit.ly) or ow.ly so you don’t use up too many characters.

Read the rest: 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets

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