A recent study by Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech examined more than 43,000 tweets over a two-week period to discover which tweets are largely ignored and which tweets engage an audience.
The findings, unsurprisingly, were that the most disliked tweets were the empty content ones: updates on someone’s mood or what they were doing at the moment, repeating old news and using too many # and @ signs were prevalent dislikes.
Tweets that ranked high in the “like” category are those that ask a question, share information or link to content that the author has created.
A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that daily Twitter users doubled in the past year, with above-average Twitter use in the 18-24-year-old and African-American categories. In addition, urban and suburban residents are significantly more likely to use Twitter than those in rural areas.
Twitter can be a highly useful law firm marketing tool for attorneys to promote their blogs and other thought leadership content. Since Twitter is essentially a micro-blogging site, the same rules apply: create unique, original content that adds value, and your audience will respond.
Here are some tips for creating attention-getting tweets:
Real-time rules – Twitter lives in real-time, so you not only need to keep it fresh, you also need to add your own spin on whatever topic you’re tweeting about. Simply retweeting links gets stale quickly.
Tease – hook your readership by teasing your topic and then linking to a more lengthy post on a topical news item on your blog or website.
Keep it positive – negative comments are generally disliked.
Avoid symbol clutter – Using too many hashtags (#), mentions (@) or abbreviations makes your tweets hard to follow.
Add to your retweet – when you retweet something, add your own spin so you are contributing to the conversation.