Twitter Cheat Sheet: How to Increase Your Engagement [INFOGRAPHIC]

Are you getting the type of interaction and retweets you always hoped for on Twitter? 

Did you know you could basically double your engagement rates on Twitter just by including an image within your tweet? Or that using more than two hashtags or tweeting too much can significantly lower your interaction rates? Twitter is the fastest growing social network increasing by 40% over the last half of 2012. This makes it paramount for your business to master the intricacies of Twitter, which will help further raise awareness about your brand and generate additional new leads. So here are some great tips and tricks to help you increase engagement on Twitter like follower retweets, click-through rates (CTR) and replies.

Retweets

First off, 78% of the engagement with a brand is through retweets. As the number of tweets you send per day increases though, engagement will typically decrease. The other 22% of engagement with a brand's tweets are from replies.

Interaction

92% of the interaction with a brand's tweets are by clicking links, but most businesses don't realize that the engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday—only 19% of brands actually tweet during the weekend. Brands typically see 30% higher interaction rates tweeting from 8am to 7pm. Tweets that contain less than 100 characters also receive 17% higher engagement than longer tweets. So keep it short and sweet! Tweets that contain links receive 86% higher retweet rates than tweets without links. The bottom line is people are looking for you to provide them with links to relevant information.

Hashtags

Tweets with hashtags receive 2X more engagement than those without hashtags, yet only 24% of measured tweets contain hashtags. Tweets with one or two hashtags have a 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags. However, tweets that use more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement. So using hashtags can be effective, just don't overdo it!

How to Increase Engagement

Tweets with image links have twice the engagement rates compared to tweets without images! Also, tweets that ask followers to "Retweet" recieve 12X higher retweet rates than those that do not. However, only less than 1% of brands implement this strategy. In fact, when followers are explicitly asked to and "Retweet" is spelled out, the retweet rate is 23X higher than the average. When using the shortened term "RT" instead, the retweet rate is only 10X higher. Each business and brand on Twitter has its own unique voice and audience to cater too. There is no ultimate solution for brands, you need to keep testing and refining your methods and strategy to determine what works best. As a reference, the folks at Linchpin have provided a great starting point, one that looks at user engagement data collected by Buddy Media from over 320 of the world's largest brands.

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