What Makes a Good Tweet?

Natascha Thomson

MarketingXlerator

March 2012

What Makes a Good Tweet?

Top 3 Tips for a Good Tweet

1. Listen before you Tweet

2. Add your own insights vs. just (re)tweeting

3. Be a personality not a company

Top 3 Tips to increase your following

1. Follow influencers & other interesting people

2. Tweet during relevant events using the hashtag

3. Include influencers or other relevant handles in your Tweets (even ask for RTs)

It’s not a science and the rule of thumb is: use common sense!

What Makes a Good Tweet?

It’s actually quite complex…

Increase: Reach – Following - Influence – Engagement

Qualitative

• It’s audience appropriate (what & when)

• Good content = not a product pitch

• Leaves room for Retweeting

• Influences (your audience)

• Is a well-defined piece in your overall social media strategy

• Is Retweeted by your influencers (not just your colleagues & friends)

Quantitative

• Tweet is Retweeted and/or commented on

• Creates a high amount of impressions (reach); premise: influencers have many followers

• Click-throughs to promoted content, e.g. via Bit.ly’s

• Growth in number of followers

• Increases your Klout score

Related: Klout, Twittalyzer, TweetReach

Crowd-sourced: “What makes a good Tweet?”

1. “Make it catchy and engage the audience by asking questions

2. Simple language, easy to read

3. Use hashtags in context, don’t just add them at the end

4. Don’t use marketing but conversational language

5. Think first what is relevant for you audience before (re) tweeting

6. Add your own comment to a RT (modify the original tweet), as it adds

more value than simple re-tweeting.”

~ Dorothea Sieber, Social Media Manager for HANA, SAP

1) “Retweetable without modifying the tweets. So there should be at least 10

chars available for the RT@twitterhandle

2) Using the industry/known hashtags. Don’t create your own variation of

hashtag. Do some research on the existing hashtag that people use and

include that in your tweet to increase visibility.

3) Add twitter handles of others when u refer to them. Don’t just simply state

the name. Research if they have a twitter handle.

4) Good tweets might fail to pick up traction if tweeted at the wrong time.

Scheduled them at the right time when your followers are most active on

Twitter”

~ Palm Norchoovech, Social Media Manager for SCN, SAP

@D_Sieber

@PalmNorch

Crowd-sourced: “What makes a good Tweet?”

1. “Not too many hashtags – 1 or two.

2. Timing – 5-6 per day, not rapid fire of 3 or 4 tweets one after another (space

them out – unless it’s an #SAPChat)

3. Don’t use twitter as a PR channel. Think about how what you tweet is of

value – don’t mention SAP just to mention it.

4. Bit.ly or other shortener – Link at the end.

5. Message first, Link second, hash third.

6. Test punctuation, because on some tweet dashboards a “&” will show up

looking like a “?” etc.

~ Margot Heiligman, Solution Management Director, SAP

1) “Find the powerful balance between art and science. Work in a pithy

grabber. Mashable and Guy Kawasaki both have great examples of pithy

grabber tweets.

2) For example, from this morning on @mashable: Delta Wants You to Shop

Amazon While Flying - http://on.mash.to/wYFZHr

3) They don’t necessarily leverage hashtags to their full potential, but the

content piques your interest and gets you to click-through for more.”

~ Caroline Kohout, Social Media Marketing Strategist, SAP @CarolineKohout

@mheiligman

“Good Tweet” Examples

1. Mark your calendar: #SAP Inside Track is coming back to Vancouver!

#SITVAN http://spr.ly/6018RCp0 #mobility

2. How Will #Mobile #Tech Change The World By 2016? See how one #SAP

customer is planning at #SAPForum - spr.ly/6015RCrF

3. The Importance of Delivering Consistent Customer Experiences

http://t.co/CUlXnjSB @1to1media #sapcrm

4. Delta Wants You to Shop Amazon While Flying - http://on.mash.to/wYFZHr

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