The 5 Big Reasons Why Tweets Fail to Go Viral

A harsh reality of the Twitterverse is that at any given time, 70 to 75 percent of tweets fall on deaf ears, or as the case may be, on blind eyes. In the never-ending onslaught of messages that is Twitter, you have to stand above the crowd to get noticed.

There are five major reasons that most Twitter users can’t seem to make a tweet go viral. Learn about them, and better yet, learn to avoid them.

1. No Call to Action

Like a good landing page, your tweet should contain a call to action. Something as simple as “RT”—meaning “retweet this”—is preferable to nothing at all.

There are two elements to the call-to-action concept with regards to retweets: the implied call to action, and the explicit. Your explicit call to action, “RT” in the example above, should be short and to the point. Your implied call to action is the value of the tweet itself. A well-written tweet should sell itself to users, urging them to send the tweet along to their friends.

A tweet containing little more than a link has no chance of going viral. You should strive to make your tweet as unique, compelling, and valuable as possible. While this may be obvious, it is all too easy to forget once you find yourself working with only 140 characters.

Keep in mind that Twitter users are constantly bombarded with tweets, and indeed, retweet requests. Stay ahead of the game by demonstrating to your followers why they should retweet your message. Don’t rely on the explicit call to action.

2. Low Quality Link

A power Twitter user, the type that has the kind of following that you can’t wait to tap into, has no interest in sharing a low quality, spammy, or otherwise irrelevant link with their followers. One of the main laws of Twitter marketing is that you should never link directly to a landing page—not if you want others to spread your tweet around for you. Instead, link to well-written, thought-provoking, and valuable content. The page that you link to can contain a link to your landing page, but be careful not to draw unnecessary attention to it.

These are things that big Twitter users do take the time to look at before deciding whether to do you the favor of a retweet or not. Keep this one question in mind when writing your tweet and deciding what to link to: “How will this benefit my followers?” Then, demonstrate to the big Twitter user that you have their concerns and interests in mind.

3. The Wrong Time of Day

A tweet is a very short-lived entity. Unlike Facebook posts, tweets exist in the moment. If your tweet doesn’t get picked up, that’s it. One of the most important things you can do to help your tweet go viral is to identify your target demographic, and then determine when the largest number of those people will be online. For most niches, this means avoiding posting your best tweets in the middle of the night or late in the evening.

Tweet primetime seems to be from around 9 am to 3 pm Eastern Standard Time. Getting them out earlier in the day also gives them plenty of time to be retweeted before tweet volume winds down in the afternoon. If you find yourself in the evening needing to get a tweet out, you may be better off waiting for morning. It is always a mistake to tweet the same messages to your followers multiple times.

4. No Hash Tag

A hash tag is composed of the “#” sign followed by a word or phrase that represents your tweet, it can be your brand for instance. Before you use a hash tag, you should visit hashtags.org or a similar site and see if anyone else is using the tag that you want to use.

Sites like hashtags.org group tweets by hashtag, creating a saerchable database of related tweets. By creating a body of useful tweets on a single subject with a hashtag, you can instill confidence in your followers. A tweet containing such a hashtag is valuable for both you and the people you hope will retweet for you, and hence has a much greater chance of actually being retweeted.

5. The Tweet is Difficult to Understand

Finally, while Twitter is much more laid back on the surface than other networking sites such as LinkedIn, don’t make the mistake of being overly carefree when it comes to spelling and grammar. Your followers and prospective retweeters will judge you based on both.

Your grammar combined with the elements above all come together to form a conclusion about you and your message in the space of just a few seconds. Try to keep any message that you want retweeted at 110 to 120 characters or less. This way, the person retweeting your message may have the chance to add a few words or a hash tag of their own, or an @Reply.

Always keep in mind that a retweet is usually a “you scratch your back, I’ll scratch yours” proposition. Give your followers incentive to retweet your messages, and they will. Ask yourself, “What’s in it for them?”

Top Tips to a More Successful Blog

The success of your blog is determined by the number of visits that it receives from your target audience. Your content needs to appeal to their interests, and they should know where to find you in the first place. Without your readers, you will end up wasting the information that you are posting. Being at the top takes a lot of hard work and creativity, and you should know how to maximise the tools that are available at your disposal.

Here are some tips on how to attract more readers and increase your website traffic:

1. Know Your Audience

You must have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience. Learn about the things that they desire and the type of information that they want to know about. Using surveys is a good way of gathering information about your target market. You can create an online questionnaire and ask for feedback. You can also consolidate comments from previous customers and readers and assess the types of posts that they are more inclined to comment on. Knowing what your readers want will make it so much easier for you to decide what kind of content should be posted on your site.

2. Use Social Media Tools

You need to utilise social media tools to reach a wider audience no matter how good your content may be. Having great content does not automatically gain you a wide readership or audience. Fans need to be able to share your content with their own followers and subscribers using social media plug-ins and share buttons. Most of the major social media tools including Twitter, Facebook and Google+ provide options for sharing.  All you need to do is to make these buttons available and visible on your web page.

3. Capitalise on Hot Topics

Once you have identified the general topics that interest your readers the most, you need to create multiple content revolving around these hot topics. Find different angles or points of discussion that pertain to the same basic concept or idea. If your audience is interested in planting corn, for example, then you can write different articles on how to plant corn, the challenges faced by corn farmers, the biggest misconceptions about corn farming, suggestions on how to maximise corn harvest, and earning from corn farming. The key is writing multiple articles on the same topic without being repetitive.

4. Harness the Power of Emails

It is a known fact that most readers who visit your site will no longer come back for a second glance. There is a big possibility of them losing the original link that they clicked on or simply forgetting about the name of your website. It will be your responsibility to attract these readers to be returning customers. Having them sign up or subscribe to your page using their email address is a great way of encouraging them to come back to your site.  Once they sign up, you will be able to email them links to your latest blog posts on a regular basis.

5. Guest Blogging

Take a look at the most popular blogs in your industry and you will notice that there are multiple writers providing content. There are a lot of advantages to having guest bloggers write for your website. First, it provides variety and fresh ideas for your site. You will also have other people promoting your website as they promote the content that they provide to you. You will also forge strong alliances and friendships with other bloggers and authors in the industry. Lastly, you do not have to provide articles and content all by yourself.

Applying these tips to your blog will improve the chances of increasing and maintaining a healthy traffic of loyal readers. Building your presence online using social media tools and tactics is a great way of boosting your business and gaining more customers.

Improved Search Engine Rankings Using Social Media

One of the best ways to improve website traffic is by gaining a good search engine ranking position from search engines such as Google and Bing. Online users who type in specific search phrases or keywords are provided a long list of related sites; however the vast majority only go as far as reading the first page. Unfortunately this can be the case, no matter how excellent your content may be and it can remain in obscurity, unless the website improves its search engine ranking method, with the aim of propeling it to the first page of the search results.

The “game” of optimisation used to be simpler; today webmasters can resort to a number of unethical means (such spamming) in an effort to gain top rankings. This can result in useful content often being difficult to find, as online viewers are required to click through a long list of irrelevant websites before finding the information they need. However recent updates made by the top search engines, have focused on providing “natural search results.” Google, for instance, recently released the Penguin update which aimed to reduce low-quality back-links, over optimisation, and illicit SEO strategies.

More than ever, it has become essential for writers and bloggers to provide online content that is both compelling and informative. It is also important to focus on building a strong network of natural back-links that serve as portals to the website. The more links there are out there, the higher the chances of a stray reader stumbling upon your page.

Here are some social media techniques that you can use to drive audience to your site:

1. Social Media as a Tool for Encouraging Back-links

Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are great tools for building strong links to your webpage. Google and Bing have both made confirmations that links used on these social media sites are used in their algorithm. Fortunately, both sites have made it easy for webmasters and writers to integrate their blog links into post creation. For instance, once new entry is posted, it is possible to have Facebook and Twitter post updates and inform followers. Google+ is another great way of reaching a wide audience base, the more “+1” votes recieved on a blog post, the more visibility it gets.

Optimal times for posting upon social media platforms exist for certain demographics; however another method is to post multiple times, although not excessively. Scheduling tools are also widely available online, which enable authors to have certain links posted repeatedly over a pre-determined period of time. This way, you can reach potential readers who have varying schedules of activity or may be in different time zones. Scheduling also spares webmasters from the monotony of having to manually create updates featuring the same links.

2. Social Media as a Source of Content Ideas

The concept of search engines is that users are looking for information, based on certain keywords and phrases. If your goal is to get many readers, then you will likely attract more people by writing about content that interests them personally. The more interested people are about your article, the higher the likelihood of them sharing your link with other users. Thus, it is beneficial, to entice readers to share through social media network,s while providing them with the content they crave.

Social media sites are also excellent places for finding ideas on article topics of current interest. They have become tools that provide information based on what the majority of users are interested in, at any given time. Twitter for instance, has an easy to use search bar and “Trending Topics List” that will give you an insight into what people are currently talking about and showing interest in. Use these methods to find topics that fit your blog portfolio and provide interesting information or insight that will attract attention and let potential readers find it by making it available online.

3. Encourage Social Media Following and Re-Posting

Social media is the best tool to encourage direct access to your website via links. While being very easy to use, readily available, widely accessible and in terms of the future, being relatively safe from any algorithmic changes that search engines may make, for instance calculating page rank. In other words, it would be wise for a blogger not to simply rely on search engines for page visits, but to maximise the usage of social media to attract a strong following.

Most social media networks provide sharing buttons that can be clearly displayed on a website. These can easily be attached to your blog, using codes that are obtained by visiting the social media platform support page. Having these buttons displayed visibly on your page will encourage readers to share articles or entries that catch their interest.

As a last resort, another approach is to directly ask for help from your followers. Adding simple phrases like “please re-tweet” or “please re-post” is enough to encourage other users to share your post. This is particularly true for well-written and informative content. However it is important not to seem desperate, as this may impact upon your followers.

In summary, social media tools can be used to drive attention and traffic to your site. However, the content of your site remains the biggest factor in attracting readers. Content, after all, is king. No matter how extensive your social presence is, poor content will not get a good mileage. The best way to maximise your tools is to become an industry expert or authority figure in the topics that you are writing about. Gaining credibility in your craft will result in more social media following and repeat visitors to your site.