Top 10 Reasons You Don’t Get Retweeted

Have you ever hit the ‘tweet’ button expecting to send ripples through the twitterverse and had nothing happen?  There are a variety of reasons people may not be sharing your tweets and you should consider experimenting to find your ideal tweeting style.  Here are ten common reasons your tweets aren’t getting retweeted:

1. Different Audience: Many people will not be retweeting you simply because your tweets aren’t relevant to their audience.  For example, if you’re tweeting about SEO and one of your followers is a bakery, their followers are likely expecting tweets about baked goods. Even if the bakery finds your article about SEO useful, they probably won’t retweet it.

2.  Your Tweet is Too Long:  If you’re hoping to get retweeted, leave some room! As a general rule, it is best to leave a minimum of 15 characters for people to add their own piece to your message.

3.  You’re Asking Them to Retweet You: Publicly asking for retweets comes across as very desperate and no one likes to be told what to do.

4. Your Tweet is Boring: Maybe your tweet just isn’t that interesting.  Perhaps you were too factual in your delivery or used a dull headline.

5.  Poor or Unshareable Content: Ok so you have a great headline, that doesn’t mean your content lives up to it.   If your content gets a lot of views but people are hesitant to share it maybe it isn’t interesting or is too opinionated, controversial, or embarrassing to share with their followers.  For example, your well-written article about the best pregnancy tests available at the drugstore may be helpful to many women, but not necessarily something they are going to plaster their social media channels with.

6.  Your Timing is Off: If you are tweeting while your followers are sleeping it may be a prime reason you aren’t seeing retweets.  The best time of day to tweet is generally the late afternoon through early evening, followed by lunch hours, mornings, and late evenings.  The day of the week matters as well.  For example, if you’re tweeting an article like ‘Six ways to make more room in your office’ on a Saturday, where the majority of people are happy to have the day off, it likely won’t be received as well as it would if it was a weekday. Some social media management dashboards, such as Hootsuite, can autoschedule your tweets so they are sent out at the optimal time of day.

7.  You’re Not Linking to Your Own Content:  If you are tweeting a lot of links to other people’s content your followers will most likely credit the original source rather than retweet you, at best you can expect a mention.

8.  You’re a Loner:  If you don’t have many followers, it may be hard to get your tweet seen and retweeted- especially by someone with a lot of followers.  Make some friends and find an audience before you start expecting retweets.  Also, be sure your avatar is not an egg- that screams newb.

9.  Not Using the Right Hashtags: If your tweet didn’t have any hashtags it makes it harder for people to find and categorize.  If you use irrelevant hashtags your tweet will likely be ignored. Here is a post that hashes out hash tags: How to Use Hashtags Effectively>>

10.  Poor Twittiquette: Yes- twitter has its own unique etiquette.  If your using ALL CAPS, coarse language, are offensive, being obnoxious, or spamming don’t expect a retweet and please read ‘Twittiquette 101’>>

We hope this article has helped you out!

Cah{o,o}ts

Follow @Cahootstweets
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