How to become more popular on Twitter

It is often assumed that the popularity of social media content depends on the popularity of the author or the topic. But a team from Cornell University has found that the way a tweet is composed can play a big part too.

To work out the importance of the composition, the team took thousands of pairs of tweets on the same topic from different accounts around the world to analyse how they performed in terms of retweets and reach.

They found that one of the most effective strategies for improving a tweet’s retweetability was the inclusion of a call to action: i.e. a plea like “RT”, “retweet” or “please retweet”.

Other strategies that improve a tweet’s popularity are putting either a positive or negative spin on the message, making it informative and not referring to the first person.

After carrying out the work, the team has created a web app that determines how likely a tweet is to attract a retweet (see screengrab above) so you can test it out yourself.

Mashable, who tested out the tool, noticed that the algorithm which works out a tweet’s potential popularity can be thrown off. For instance, they found that if you throw in a random extra word at the end of a tweet, the calculator mistakes it for being more informative – simply because it is longer.

The Cornell team have also acknowledged the limitations of the tool, noting that they are unable to make it understand humour. “We would love to capture amusingness or cleverness, but we haven't found a way to do that yet," they explained in a press release.

Nevertheless, it still offers some interesting insight into what works and what doesn’t, and you can test out your own perceptibility with the handy quiz they’ve created here.

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