Do you need a Twitter Cheat Sheet?

There are a many myths about engagement. Rules made up at cocktail parties and measurements that don’t allow for the one to one human connection that Twitter does best.

Dashburst reviewed a new Twitter Cheat Sheet. The facts are right, but before you implement them, let’s have a discussion here about how following them can hurt you

Twitter Cheat Sheet

Are you getting the type of interaction and retweets you always hoped for on Twitter? Did you know you could basically double your engagement rates on Twitter just by including an image within your tweet? Or that using more than two hashtags or tweeting too much can significantly lower your interaction rates? Twitter is the fastest growing social network increasing by 40% over the last half of 2012. This makes it paramount for your business to master the intricacies of Twitter, which will help further raise awareness about your and and generate additional new leads.

So here are some great tips and tricks to help you increase engagement on Twitter like follower retweets, click-through rates (CTR) and replies.

First off, 78% of the engagement with a and is through retweets. As the number of tweets you send per day increases though, engagement will typically decrease. The other 22% of engagement with a brand’s tweets are from replies.

92% of the interaction with a brand’s tweets are by clicking links, but most businesses don’t realize that the engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday–only 19% of brands actually tweet during the weekend. Brands typically see 30% higher interaction rates tweeting from 8am to 7pm. Tweets that contain less than 100 characters also receive 17% higher engagement than longer tweets. So keep it short and sweet! Tweets that contain links receive 86% higher retweet rates than tweets without links. The bottom line is people are looking for you to provide them with links to relevant information.

Tweets with hashtags recieve 2X more engagement than those without hashtags, yet only 24% of measured tweets contain hashtags. Tweets with one or two hashtags have a 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags. However, tweets that use more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement. So using hashtags can be effective, just don’t overdo it!

Tweets with image links have twice the engagement rates compared to tweets without images! Also, tweets that ask followers to “Retweet” recieve 12X higher retweet rates than those that do not. However, only less than 1% of ands implement this strategy. In fact, when followers are explicitly asked to and “Retweet” is spelled out, the retweet rate is 23X higher than the average. When using the shortened term “RT” instead, the retweet rate is only 10X higher.