What makes a successful tweet? No seriously, I’m asking.
I was surprised yesterday after I got done with work to see I had gotten over 100 notifications on Twitter during the day. Which is very rare for me (probably less than a dozen other times?)
I really had no idea why. Did someone tweet @ me and someone else about something, and then there were a lot of replies? Did someone comment on something and then an unrelated conversation started in the thread (which is happened before)?
No, it was actually mostly because of one of my tweets that had gotten 70+ likes and 25+ retweets. When I looked, I saw it was this “retweet with comment” I did about a Daily Poster piece (founded by David Sirota), with a comment from me and a screenshot from one of their articles., and the hashtag #StimulusChecksNOW.
To be completely honest, I was so busy with work on Wednesday that I completely forgot I had tweeted it! Digging deeper, I saw that Andrew Perez, who’s the editor of The Daily Poster, had liked and retweeted my post, which is really flattering! I followed him after this — I’m already a subscriber to The Daily Poster anyway, so might as well follow the editor who showed my tweet some love.
So my question is, why this tweet? I think it was a good tweet, but was it really that good? It’s an important issue, but there are thousands of other people tweeting about it. So what else could it be?
I’ve tweeted @dailyposter before and only gotten a few likes.
I’ve tweeted popular hashtags before and usually get a few likes, sometimes none at all.
Why did Andrew Perez see my tweet in the first place? Perez has 21+K followers and is following 6K people. Does he or someone else their read every tweet that mentions The Daily Poster?
Was it a combo of using the hashtag, and doing @, and retweeting with a comment? I don’t even think the comment is all that great, it mostly restates what the article says.
Was it just a matter of right place, right time?
The same thing happens with live reads on TYT. I’m incredibly fortunate that for, whatever reason, my comments and tweets get picked pretty often to be read on-air.
Sometimes, when I tweet a joke, I think “Haha, I wonder if this dad joke will get read! Or some likes or comments.” Or I’ll take a minute or two to try to iron out a thoughtful reply, and I’ll think “That’s a really good point”, either supporting or taking issue with, something Ana, Cenk, John (etc.) said.
And sometimes it does get read. But a *lot* more often is that I’ll tweet something that I would never expect to get picked, but it still gets read on the air. Something I think is pretty lame or rambling, or took two seconds to think of, or has spelling or grammar mistakes, but it gets picked.
Sometimes I’ll hear Eclectic Miscellanea, and I’ll think “hey, they must have liked that joke!” or “I’m glad they picked that comment”, and it’s something that I don’t think was good at all. I’ll say to myself, “Why did you pick *that* one?!”
But then I remind myself that getting read at all is really awesome, that five years ago I would have never dreamed of Ana, Cenk, John, or anyone else reading anything I wrote, much less commenting on it or laughing at a joke I made. And then I just go back to watching and chatting with everyone who’s watching.
I only have about 1K followers on Twitter. But apparently some people and/or the algorithms seem to like what I have to say sometimes. My wife still has a hard time believing they read my comments on the air (thanks for the vote of confidence!) or that occasionally I get dozens or even over a hundred likes on something on Twitter.
So I’m trying to decide whether to just go with it, or try to more actively figure out what does or doesn’t work, and why. If nothing else, if I do get a better idea, it might help with getting people to visit this site and hopefully volunteer or chip in to a progressive organization!
