3 Ways to Make Tweets Easier For Others To Retweet

One of the best ways to increase your odds of getting your tweets retweeted is to make those tweets easy for others to retweet. Quite often, original tweets have to be manipulated in order to make them retweetable. Here's 3 ways to make your tweets easier for others to retweet:

1. When composing your tweet, remember that your retweet sig will be added onto the front end when someone retweets your tweet. This means that the original tweet you write will actually be less than 140 characters as you factor in your retweet sig. The "retweet sig(nature)" consists of the letters RT, a space, your @name, and a space before the first word of the tweet.

Here is an example of a tweet written by @SusanCosmos that I really liked and wanted to retweet.

I have retweeted and here's what the retweet looks like...

You can see that SusanCosmos retweet sig contains 16 characters. That means the number of characters Susan has to work with in her original tweet after factoring in her retweet sig to give her tweet enough room to fit nicely in my tweet box is going to be 124 characters (140 - 16). Susan's original tweet was 91 characters so she could have added in 33 more characters (91 + 33 = 124)

NOTE: It is a common mistake to forget that the spaces between words also count as characters. As well, the spaces before and after the @name are important so that the @name can become a live link back to that person. If the RT or next word butt up next to the @name, the link in the @name won't go live because Twitter sees it as one big word as seen here. Notice how now @SusanCosmos is not pink (the color I chose for live links) like in the above example:

Pre-factoring in your retweet sig character number when you compose a tweet makes it easier for people to retweet because when they copy & paste and add the letters RT, everything will fit nicely. If your original tweet goes over, then retweeters will have to start chopping off letters in your tweet which can end up looking like a Franken-tweet.

At most, a retweet sig will contain 20 characters because the maximum number for a Twitter name is 15 characters then you add on 5 characters which consist of the characters: RT, @, and 2 spaces. How many characters are there in your retweet sig?

2. Factor in a link. Along with factoring the retweet sig, factor in the number of characters for a post/article link. A typical type of tweet that has high retweetable factor is one that has a link to a cool story somewhere else. For example, @zen_habits did this tweet pointing to a post about creative copy:

@zen_habits retweet sig is 15 characters and the link to the post is 17 characters long. Again, a space has to be left in front of the link in order for it to go live, so that the actual number of characters zen_habits had to work with in his original tweet is 107: 140 - 15 (the retweet sig) = 125 - 18 (the link 17 + 1 for the space) = 107. zen_habits used 72 characters in this creative copy example so there's a bit more room for a couple words.

Not all tiny url makers create their urls with the same number of characters so you will have to count how many your tiny url shrinker uses. I use Tweetburner, and their links are 22 characters long. I've seen others with 17 and 25 characters.

3. Many bloggers are now starting to use the Tweetmeme button on their blogs to make it easy for their blog readers to retweet the blog post which is fantastic for us retweeters because literally all we have to do is hit the "retweet" button and the entire retweet is written for us.

Here's an example retweet that appeared in my Twitter home box from the food blog Noshtopia on a post about an Oatmeal idea. As soon as I hit the "retweet" button on the Noshtopia post, my Twitter page appeared and Tweetmeme created this:

With Tweetmeme, the blogger has to be conscious of how many characters their blog title is because to create the retweet, Tweetmeme takes up a good amount of information at the git-go. Before we even get to what space is left for the tweet, first there is the tweetmeme retweet sig, the blog name with a semicolon and space, and the link url which is 25 characters.

So, in this Noshtopia retweet example all the Tweetmeme necessities take up 51 characters which leaves only 89 characters for the blog post title and maybe some room for the retweeter to add in a few words of their own.

Therefore blogger, figure out how many characters are going to be automatically taken up for your Tweetmeme powered retweets factoring in your blog's name.

So, there you have 3 ways to craft your tweets to make it easier and nicer looking for others to retweet your tweets. What other retweet techniques have you used to help make it easier for others to retweet your tweets?