Dan Zarella studied a mountain of tweets and re-tweets and came up with some interesting facts on why some tweets are re-twitted (?) more than others:
1. Re-tweets contain more links. A lot more – almost 57% vs. 19%. If you want to get re-tweeted, include some content.
2. Re-tweets tend to have longer words with more syllables in them. You read that right. Dumbing it down does not get you ahead.
3. Re-tweets require “a higher level of education to understand.” Zarella used two different types of tests to measure this – both yielded the same results. This keeps getting better and better.
4. Re-tweets have more new words and concepts. Compared to non-re-tweeted tweets (I’m pretty sure that made sense), re-tweets contained more unique words and novel ideas.
5. Re-tweets are less self-referential. A tweet about “what you had for breakfast is less likely to get re-tweeted than talking about what Obama had for lunch.” And…tweets with swear words are less often re-tweeted.
How about that? For people to pass along what you have to say, make sure it’s intelligent, original, has some content, isn’t a microscopic view of you, and isn’t laced with profanity.
Kind of blows the theory of what gains traction in a mass audience right out of the water.
via Mashable with more data and nice graphs