What makes people follow, favorite, click, and retweet? And does that have anything to do with who buys what books? Today, I came across a Stanford study, Who Gives a Tweet, that provides some answers to what kinds of tweets people like. My take-away from the four-page, fairly technical report:
1. Funny is good.
2. Informative is even better.
3. People like to be asked, so polish up that question mark.
4. No one likes a whiner. Well, almost no one. And no one likes a bore. Not even those few folks who don’t mind whiners.
5. Surprisingly, people like a self-promoter. (I confess, I did consider omitting this.)
6. And they like random thoughts.
7. #Don’t #overuse #hashtags.
8. @mention @your own risk.*
Elsewhere I found three other helpful hints:
9. Tweets on weekends and afternoons get more response than at other times (although afternoon Pacific time is, of course, evening on the East Coast, and even later in Britain, and this is a global thing, right?)
10. Links imbedded in the middle get more clicks that those else-tweet, and
11. A tweet including a request to be retweeted … is more likely to be.
How does that translate into selling books? Well, your guess is as good as mine. But I go by the theory that anyone who has connected with me and, hopefully, found my tweets informative (if somewhat self-promoting), is more likely to read something with my name on it.
If you found this helpful, please do use the twitter link below! – Meg
