Get More Twitter Re-Tweets

I was watching a video, the other day, in which Tony Robbins explained how, in all kinds of different situations, when sometimes, no matter what you do, nothing seems to work.  You maybe don’t know it, but you probably be just one millimetre off.  And that one millimeter could change your whole life!

His message was simple.  Don’t give up; find a way to make that adjustment!

For example, he explained how, with a golf shot, one millimetre out when the club face strikes the ball, can make the difference, 150 yards further on, between landing on the green or in a lake.  And when it comes to facial beauty, a world famous plastic surgeon calculated and systematically measured how the wrong one millimeter can mean the difference between being stunningly beautiful, or butt ugly.

Remember this concept, and next time you think you’re on the brink of a disaster, and nothing is working for you, sometimes an adjustment of just one millimeter is enough to turn failure into victory.

Here’s one of those, seemingly, minor adjustments you can make, right now, which down the line can make an enormous difference, and best of all there’s a *FREE For Ever* plan.

Why do we see these dramatic improvements?

Recently, some research was done by Leo Widrich, cofounder of BufferApp.com, focusing on the impact scheduling Tweets with Buffer can have on re-tweets.

The results, although a remarkable improvement, were perhaps not so surprising.

• Typically, people who Buffer’d their Tweets increased the clicks on links they posted by 200%, within 2 weeks.
• On average the amount of re-tweets they obtained roughly doubled.
• Buffer users increased their average follower count by 104 followers within 3 weeks.

Obviously, the interesting question is – why do we see these dramatic improvements?

Let’s take a look at the results and try to identify the causes of these increased clicks, retweets and additional followers. The results, it seems, are very much in line with the suggestions he made earlier and three important factors stood out.

1. Tweet At Times Your Followers Are Online

No big surprise here then.  Because very often, we are reading on-line at times, when it isn’t a great time to actually share on Social Media like Twitter (depending where your audience is in the world, relative to you). In my case, I am usually reading posts late at night or early in the morning. According to this study, the optimal times Buffer suggested, account for the largest part of increased click rates on Tweets sent.  You just need to remember to set you time zone correctly and think about where the majority of your audience lives, or the effect of Buffers time-lapsed transmission will be completely lost.

2. Tweet Frequently, But Not Too Frequently

Another component was that Buffer made it a lot easier for users to Tweet more regularly and at a higher frequency.

The favourite methods used for Buffer-ing are the browser extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. With these you can add any article you are reading to your Buffer with just one click.

The important factor is that Buffer allowed users to re-tweet more people by adding re-tweets to their Buffer. This happens via a Buffer button right inside Twitter.com that turns every Tweet into an old school RT.

An interesting point here, and actually feeds in from Dan Zarrella’s research, which had a similar result:

Going over 4 Tweets posted per hour will drop your click through rate to literally zero.

This is quite understandable, when you stop and think about it, as this many updates are just overwhelming for most of your followers.

3. Promote Others More

Another very interesting discovery was that people who Tweeted a great variety of sources, averaged a higher click through rate than people who focused on one or only a very limited number of blogs.

Although you may have already found out for yourself, I find it very interesting it can make such a big difference for your followers. The idea here is that you try to link to the very best content you can find, and do so by looking at a great variety of blogs that you Tweet. It is a great way to build trust and makes your stream way less self-promotional, which in the context of what we are trying to accomplish is very important.

So, even though the research tried to stay very focused on the metrics for this post, it’s interesting to note the research shows the main driver of increased clicks and retweets, turns out to be engagement.

What are your thoughts on Buffer? Do you think it could help bringing up the direct return to your Twitter efforts too?

You can try it out here Buffer on a *FREE For Ever* plan, or if you’re a Buffer user already, you can click the Buffer button which will appear below this post.

I use Buffer on every post here at Social Strategy.  And I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think it would help me make friends and influence people.

Please let me know how you get on with Buffer, and how it works for you.