Social Media is becoming a central part of our lives. And our dependence on it is getting stronger. There are plenty of other websites that give tips on how get more retweets or followers, but how many of them can claim to have a solid scientific evidence to support their tips?
Have you ever wondered which is the best moment of the day to publish your tweets to have the biggest retweetability? Or which topic is more likely to give you more visibility? Or again which is the best mood to impress your followers?
Here is the answer. We analysed several features of over one million real tweets to analyze the popularity of their authors. We sum up all what we discovered here and share this found knowledge with you guys.
If you have a short attention span you could scroll down to the bottom to get a short summary of what we found.
What is the right vibe to put out?
Although there are many different moods, it is possible to classify tweets as positive or negative. Feel like learning how we did this? Check out the dataset tab That is exactly what we did, and we investigated which is better for your retweet count. You may naturally think that it is beneficial to spread positivity into the world and that people are more likely to retweet you when you are posting nothing but good vibes. I mean nobody wants to deal with downers all the time, right? Let’s see if that’s true. You may be surprised to know the majority of tweets were found to be positive; I guess not everyone is complaining all the time on Twitter. After looking at the top retweeted tweets for both categories, positive tweets tended to have a higher ceiling for the retweet count. But, just because the ceiling is higher, doesn’t mean they have a better chance of getting retweeted. Below, you can see that if you don’t have a large following already, and are expecting less than 4,000 retweets, negative tweets tend to perform slightly better. At the higher retweet counts positive tweets prevail, but if you are new to the world of being an influencer and want to start getting higher amounts of retweets, you could try using those 140 characters to rant about something that really annoys you.
Yeah, we show that at low retweet levels negative tweets tend to perform better and that there tends to be more positive tweets at higher retweet counts, but does this mean you are guaranteed to get a retweet if you do one or the other? I hate to tell you this, but no. Regardless of the vibes you are putting out, your tweet has roughly a 25% chance to get retweeted. And whether or not your tweet is even retweeted appears independent from the sentiment of the tweet; there seems to be a higher dependecy on the time of the day. Keep reading to find out how the time of the day of your post affects its performance.
When should you be posting?
We see that the number of tweets follow the same trend throught the day for the different days no matter the sentiment of the tweet. It is clear that the majority of the tweets are being sent late at night on the weekdays between 7PM-Midnight. So you might think that this is the best time to send out your tweets because people are online then, right? Not so fast. Just because that is when everyone is sending out their tweets, that doesn’t mean you have to. In fact, these times show not to be the best to maximize the number of retweets your tweet receives. So, if you really want to become an influencer, it may help to be a little more strategic as to when you share your thoughts with the world.
If you really want to boost your retweet count, you should pay close attention now. If you are posting late at night expecting the retweets to roll in, you are doing it all wrong. Don’t worry, it is a common mistake for most users. But you are about to get a one up on the rest of them. If you look below, you can see the peak times to get the highest average number of retweets. If we look across all tweets, the best times to boost your popularity are at 6AM on a Monday and 9AM on a Sunday. You may notice that the optimal time depends on your mood. If you are loving the world and nothing can bring you down, and you are able to grab a cup of coffee before hand, then it is better to post around 6AM Monday, 7AM Thursday, or 8AM Tuesday. If you are not a morning person (like me), then don’t worry, because you can still post a tweet with a big smile on your face at 5PM on Sunday and expect a large amount of retweets. You should also think about adapting a weekly ranting session into your schedule. But make sure the ranting session occurs at Sunday around 9AM.
Don’t get too excited though. You have to keep in mind that this peak may be due to someone really popular skewing the results (maybe you could be that person someday). So, we combine the statistics for the weekday and weekend to try and alleviate the affects of very popular accounts, so you have a better idea of when to post. Although we showed that most tweets are happening during the weekday, it seems like the weekend might be the time to post to increase the amount of retweets you receive. Away from your phone on the weekend? You can still get a good amount of retweets with the positive tweets early in the morning during the weekdays. If you are the type of person that likes conflict, posting a negative tweet early in the morning on a weekday, or late at night on the weekend is your best option.
Which is the best topic to talk about?
Of course, there is an infinite number of topics that you could post about. Maybe you want to rant about the family reunion your parents are forcing you to go to or that dress Lady Gaga wore to the Grammys’. If your main goal is to increase your retweets though, then there are certain topics you may want to focus on. We decided to analyze 8 popular topics including sports, politics, music, religion, health, cooking, fashion, and family. For each topic we dove into the data to figure out which of them were more retweeted. To get an idea of which topics perform better, we looked at the median of retweets. Luckyily for all the nurses, doctors, physical therapists, and health junkies out there because having tweets related to health can increase your retweet count. You may not be surprised to see that political tweets tend to perform well too. I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart to all the people that love posting about the meals they cooked, but tweets about cooking are the worst of all.
But! Take into account that sentiment is crucial in some of the topics. You will probably be more retweeted if you complain about a politician rather than praising him/her. Conversely, when talking about sports, positive tweets will be more spread than negative ones. Check out the plot below to get a better understanding. In the graph below you find the median retweet count and confidence interval for each category.
How many followers should you aim to have?
How many followers should I have to have the most visibility? We are sure this is a question that haunts most of you. In the plot below you can have the answer. Here you can see the percentage of positive and negative tweets posted per user, and the percentage of retweets coming from positive or negative tweets according to the amount of followers per user. As you can see, the lines stay almost constant with respect to the amount of followers for both positive and negative tweets. In other words, it doesn’t really matter how many followers you have! Just be yourself and make good use of the great tips we gave you! ;)
In a Nutshell
- The early bird gets the worm on the weekdays
- Relax a bit and post later on the weekends
- Sharing is caring, but not when it comes to posts about food
- Keep your tweets healthy, and the retweets will come
- Bash some politicians around election time
- Don’t worry too much about the number of followers you have
- Just be yourself!