Optimizing a Tweet, Connecting Topic with Timing

Since Jack Dorsey first launched Twitter it has quickly became apparent how much data we can fit and share in under 140 characters. And while shortening links, using hashtags and abbreviating words have become commonplace, here are two simple methods to help optimize your tweets.

Timing: More than Memes

In the world of instant communication, timing is everything. During the 2013 Super Bowl half time show, the power went out for most. For Oreo cookies however, the light went on as they threw together a quick tweet that read “You can still dunk in the dark.” The post was retweeted 15,000 times and their following increased by about 8,000 followers.

Perhaps your thinking, that’s Oreo and the Super Bowl, what about the rest of us on a day-to-day basis?

The answer to that is knowing your audience, and this takes research. Know when your followers are on and when they are active. There are oodles of tools to assist in this but my personal favorite is SEOMoz’s Followerwonk. While a majority of its services are paid, you can analyze your followers for free. The result looks something like this.

Targeted Topic: Informed Hashtags

It’s easy to throw a hashtag at the end of a tweet to gain exposure about a topic, but many times there are synonyms that people are using more. In general, as always, Twitter values brevity (i.e. using #marketing instead of #digitalmarketing). But you can take it further than that. To make informed decisions about hashtags visit Hashtags.org. It will analyze the popularity of any given hashtag over the last 24 hours giving you an idea of popularity on any given day (and if you pay, even suggest more popular hashtags).

To take it further than this, you could do your own research (or buy a Hashtag.org membership, but it isn’t cheap). Use one hashtag and analyze and print off each day of the week for a few weeks. Then over the course of a month see if you notice a topic trends over a particular day and time over another. This can then be overlaid with what you know about your current existing followers’ favorite time to tweet to fully optimize topic and timing.

Know of other services worthy of note? I’d love to hear about them.