Likeable Content Daily

by Devin Sugameli

Have you ever spent hours writing what you expect to be your greatest work, only to bemoan the utter lack of visits to your blog post 24 hours later? Wonder why you just can’t seem to break 100 RTs, or even 50? It might be that your content just isn’t as great as you think it is. But if you’ve requested critical reviews and received mostly positive feedback from a number of objective sources (friends & family don’t count) it could be anything from bad timing to a bad title to just plain bad luck. Assuming your content is good, we have 5 quick tips for boosting your Twitter virality:

1. Keep the title short and snappy. Remember that anyone who loves your post still only has 140 characters to spare. If your title is taking up even half of that, you risk losing out on followers adding their own commentary to the tweet – an endorsement more valuable than a simple RT.

2. Choose your tags wisely. Do add relevant tags to all of your posts. Don’t add a tag for every other word in the hopes that search engines will bring your blog post to the top of the results page for its one-line Michael Jackson reference.

3. Write about or quote other twitter users. If you write about or credit a fellow tweep in your post, especially one who’s using twitter to promote themselves or their business, you’re likely to pick up a few RTs from them. Make sure they see your post by @replying them directly or including their handle in the title so they can’t miss it.

4. Attach a popular, relevant hashtag. Popular hashtags are an easy way to get in front of a lot of eyeballs at once. If your content is current, it’s likely that the subject of your post has a matching hashtag already in use. Attach it to your own tweets so that anyone watching the hashtag at that moment will see it.

5. Don’t post before noon on Mondays! A 2008 study looked at the best times and days to publish content. Software developer Jake Luciani found that writers who posted on Thursdays had the greatest success in terms of comments, votes, and inbound links. Outside of weekends, Mondays were the worst days. The best times to post were between 1pm-3pm (after lunch) or 5pm-7pm PST (after work).

**Update [3/25]: As John Bethume of B2B Memes pointed out, it’s possible that the time you promote may make more of a difference than the time your posts publish. Thanks for sharing, John!

Do you have any personal tips for drawing more attention to your blog? Let us know in the comments! And of course, if you’d like to try to prove Jake Luciani wrong and RT this Monday post, we won’t complain.