My 18 best WordPress plugins post went viral. It got to the front page of Delicious and broke my previous record of number of unique visitors per day with 3602 uniques total.
More importantly the post was retweeted more than 250 times showcasing my Twitter Marketing E-book theory of getting your articles to go viral on Twitter. TweetMeme has all the stats on all the tweets including tweets by high-profile users like Darren Rowse and Guy Kawasaki.
Why should I care about retweets?
Retweeting is the most powerful factor in something going viral on Twitter. It helps spread your message from one community to the next and has the ability to spread messages much faster than any other viral marketing tool. It is free advertising and you should do anything you can to encourage readers to retweet your content. Following are the steps I take to make my blog posts go viral.
Main point – you must have an interesting article
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Have a great and a catchy headline
People are busy. They subscribe to many blogs and they follow many Twitter users. There are a lot of things on their minds and many bloggers are competing for their attention and a share of their valuable time. If the headline doesn’t grab their attention they will not click to read your great content, and they will not retweet it. See more on how to write blog headlines that make people click.
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Write a practical how-to or top-list article
List a step-by-step process towards creating something or achieving something or create a list of most popular things about something. These posts are easy to put together compared to a very long and detailed blog post.
You basically just aggregate and filter information from different sources and you make it concise, to-the-point and easy-to-understand. People love the practical advice and it has great viral potential!
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Make it easy-to-digest
People rarely read blog posts word by word. Instead, they scan the blog post picking out individual words and sentences. So make it very easy-to-read, easy-to-scan with lots of white space, paragraphs, sub-headings, bullet points and a picture. See more on how to make your blog posts scannable.
Optimize the article for retweeting
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Keep it short
You must make your tweets retweetable in order to optimize the chance of going viral on Twitter. When you send a tweet about your post, as you have a limit of 140 characters, you basically only have space for the title and the URL. You must make your title short to keep your tweet short.
Tweets must be less than 140 characters, but when a tweet is to be retweeted you need to allow space for:
- An ‘@’ symbol
- Your username
- The letters ‘RT’
- 2 spaces (one after RT and one after your username)
Looking at my own username (HowToMakeMyBlog) that is 20 extra characters for someone to retweet my tweet. Which means my tweet now actually must not take more than 120 characters in the first place. Keep this in mind and make it short!
Be proactive – Go get those tweets
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Make it easy to share
Include a Tweet-this, TweetMeme or similar buttons on your article. See more on how to automatically add Tweet This to your blog articles.
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Tweet your article yourself
Experiment with repeating the same tweet several times a day with some 8 hours in between. twitter is so big and noisy and from my experience people do not mind that you repeat tweets. Your repeat will attract attention and a new wave of retweets, as many new people have logged on since your original tweet.
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Ask for a tweet
Don’t be passive, ask people for a retweet. Either include a “please RT” call to action in your tweet or direct message people you have a good relationship with and that might be interested in the topic of the post.
You don’t have to spam everyone. In my case I only direct messaged 5 people that I know have influence and have interest in what I wrote about. 4 of them tweeted my article. A simple direct message will do. See my example:
Hi! I thought you might like my new post: Top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever -http://twurl.nl/ja1d8f
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Target the influentials
Don’t be afraid to target Twitter power users. They have a lot of followers and influence and in most cases they are looking for good and relevant articles to read and tweet.
Each of the influential users that tweeted my article, brought another wave of retweets. These are the 10 influentials that brought most retweets in my case:
- @problogger
- @guykawasaki
- @mayhemstudios
- @zaibatsu
- @JesseNewhart
- @cheth
- @theDukeOfSEO
- @Jason_Pollock
- @Arbenting
- @phaoloo
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Monitor the Twittersphere
Monitor, respond and thank the people that are talking / tweeting about your article. Sites like TweetMeme and BackType are great for this.
Prepare to take off
Doing all these steps will create a buzz around your article and the message will become contagious as more users tweet it. You will get many clicks over to your site which will hopefully result in new subscribers to your blog and will add to the growth of your blog. Make sure to have WP Super Cache plugin installed and enjoy the viral ride!
If you want to learn more about the different strategies I use for optimizing the effect of my Twitter account on my blog traffic, be sure to check out my Twitter Marketing E-Book. It features everything you need to create an authoritative and influential Twitter account.
Image by Noel Zia Lee.
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{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow Marko, congrats on those retweets! This post is an example of why I love this blog so much, you always go over how you do these amazing things.
I never usually tweet my posts more than once at a time, but this got me thinking that maybe it’s not a bad thing to tweet about it more than once.
Excellent tips Marko as always.
I love how you self analyse whenever something like this happens to you. It makes me come back to your blog again and again and it’s one of the reasons I consistently recommend your work.
Congrats on getting your post to go viral.
Cheers,
Josh
Excellent article, packed with very timely and useful information.
Twitter is a great tool, and your insight, observations, and advice really make twitter a more meaningful and purposeful experience.
Hey Marko,
When I first saw your blog, I said to myself, “This dude sure knows what he’s talking about!” And man was I right!
Kudos to your blog for getting retweeted by big players in the Twitterverse.
Thanks for another great write-up! Definitely very beneficial to Bloggers and Tweeps alike.
Best regards,
MN
Great to see yet another well written and informative article.
Your articles are always loved by my twitter followers.
Thanks
Derek
Amazing tips. thanks a lot! I came here through the tweet of problogger.
Congrats! What a great feeling to watch your stats soar! Your articles are exactly what you say–concise, informative, and most of all helpful.
You could have just contacted me pal, I would have given you just about the same numbers of followers as Problogger.
Congrats, Marko! Right on the heels of yours, I got RTed by @copyblogger and it sent my post to the front of Delicious as well. It really is a great feeling!
Excellent article with great tips, as always!
Wow thanks for all the kind words. I am glad my blog is useful to you all and I appreciate all the support with your commenting, tweeting, links etc. Thanks!
@Matt Langford – Yeah, I saw that. Great work with the article. I tweeted it very early on, just when you published it… we seem to follow each other in many steps… links from Thesis page, now Delicious…
@dantanner – I did not contact problogger, he actually found the article himself, not sure how but I am glad he liked it enough to tweet it. Feel free to tweet my articles anytime if you find them useful.
@Alison Kerr – Thesis theme transformed my blog as soon as I installed it in terms of usability / readability. A great theme when you need a reader-friendly blog.
@Angie Bowen – Your tweet got about the same amount of RT’s even though your follower number are lower than the rest of the group. Just shows that you are building a very authoritative Titter profile!
Excellent list. There were several great nuggets in this article. I will recommend for anyone struggling to get their blog going.
Very helpful information. I am a big fan of TweetMeMe. It is incredible the amount of traffic that comes from using this simple plugin.
Congratulations on the success of your article and your tweet strategy. I love the white space and clean look of your blog. It’s very readable. I’ll be back to read more as I migrate to Wordpress. I need to know more about Twitter too, one day at a time.
I think you can expect more of this in the future, your blog is doing great and you’re consistently posting useful and interesting content. I’m glad my retweet helped you out
Nice informative post ,from now on I DM to my close fellow bloggers to Rt my tweet.
Great insights Marko.
This is an example of a blog post that will be retweeted many times over.
RT for ya
Marko,
You continue to amaze, another strong case for whyfolks should consider your E-book. Looking forward to reading it. This isn’t rocket science, it simply makes sense. Before you can target the heavy hitters (power users) on Twitter, attempt to establish a connection of sorts. Commit on their blogs, drop them an email, build trust, offer a guest post, and so on.
If the effort is put forth, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind retweeting your stuff. Of course it helps if your content is both short, concise, well written, remarkable and just freakin practical. Being intentional, with hard work will bring rewards of this kind. Congrats! I know you’ve earned it!
Marko
Cool, added a few interesting ideas to my toolkit. I needed reminding since I have slowed with Twitter, taking too much time and not necessarily getting my clients to sign on the dotted line
You mention a few nice tools to take better advantage of Twitter, there are a few more here:
http://commetrics.com/articles/best-100-twitter-tools/
Incidentally, I used your ‘nudging influentials’ strategy will see if it works, one did RT it already.
Urs
So now that you got to test the SuperCache plugin… did it work? Were you sufficiently prepared for the viral tidal wave?
Congratulations, Marko!
Thanks for all the kind words!
@Lisis – I did use SuperCache over the hours where I was on Delicious but I think I would need tons more traffic to truly test the plugin. Maybe one day soon!?
haah!
Wonderful strategy, especially the DM tactic – hadn’t thought of that – now to go download some more of themplugins….!!!
Thanks Marko
Congrats
You should celebrate it.
I love your point about keeping the post title as short as possible to allow for retweets. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to retweet someone’s post but there isn’t enough room!
Thanks.
Wow, that is amazing to get that number of retweets.
Thanks for mentioning some tips of this, I’m sure I will be incorporating them and hope to get big numbers like you.
Mostly good advice, however a point I might add is that you have to be willing to give to receive. It’s a basic fundamental aspect of social media. I have tweeted your stuff many many times and the one or two times I asked you for a tweet you refused. Just saying sometimes it’s a good idea and good manners to reciprocate.
@Gerald Weber – I am not really into reciprocal linking. I believe that if I write good content people will tweet it, link to it. I tweet many links to posts that I have found useful every day and I don’t do that because I want the owners of those sites to tweet my stuff, I do it because it provided value to me and I think it might provide value to people who follow me. And if I find a post that I like from you, I will tweet it even without you asking for a tweet. I cannot just tweet reciprocal links from you to my followers, just because you found my stuff useful enough to tweet about it yourself. About SuperCache, yeah I know as I wrote in comment above, but it was nice to turn it on in hope that it may be useful.
Also if 3600 was your record traffic day you didn’t need SuperCache it’s not enough traffic to crash your site.
“Ask for a tweet
Don’t be passive, ask people for a retweet. Either include a “please RT” call to action in your tweet or direct message people you have a good relationship with and that might be interested in the topic of the post.
You don’t have to spam everyone. In my case I only direct messaged 5 people that I know have influence and have interest in what I wrote about.”
You clearly stated here that part of your strategy is that you DM a few people you have close contacts with and ask them for a tweet.
So you ask others to tweet your stuff but you are not willing to tweets others stuff in return? This is my point this creates a one sided take relationship if you are willing to ask but not willing to reciprocate.
You have some great knowledge and skills when it comes to blogging but you do fall a bit short when it comes to the world of social media. Social media IS about hand shaking and reciprocation. Not saying you should always tweet something just because it is a friend of yours but I find it very interesting that you are willing to ask others for tweets but when asked yourself you refuse.
@Gerald Weber – Research from http://danzarrella.com has shown that tweets with “please RT” get more RT’s than those without. Even though I do not use it personally I have included it as it has been proven to work the best. I just give a heads-up to couple people, I do not ask for the tweet, just inform them that the article might be useful to them. No strings attached. These guys want to be the most retweeted and they like when they can tweet a good article and get 10 RT’s, and that is why some of my stuff is useful to them.
I use please RT from time to time also it does seem to help get retweets. My point is not about putting please RT, it’s regarding directly asking others to tweet your content. There is nothing wrong with asking others to tweet you stuff. People ask me for tweets all the time and I usually agree as long as I like the person that is asking and the content is decent.
Sending a DM with a message that says. “I thought you might find this interesting” is a polite way of asking for a tweet. There is nothing wrong with asking someone to tweet your post or content but if you are going to ask others for a favor it would be nice (some might even say polite) to return the favor occasionally. Reciprocity is the handshake that is the cornerstone of social media friendship.
@Gerald Weber – Of course it is polite to “pay back” and tweet / link something from someone who has done it for you. But I have already explained you my strict quality control for guest posts, tweets etc. I really cannot retweet / link / post everything people ask me to. So what I do is I share only the stuff that I find useful, be it from a person who retweets me every day or from a person who has never heard of me. It works best for me and I am sure my blog would not be where it is right now if I just did whatever people asked me to do.
I have to agree with Gerald that reciprocity is one of the cornerstones of social media. The solution for you Marko, is to only ask for RTs directly from people you know have quality content. That way it’s a win-win.
You’re still missing the point.
I am personal friends with
@phaoloo
@zaibatsu
@mayhemstudios
and a few others you have mentioned above.
These guys retweet my stuff regularly and I retweet theirs as well. It’s not because we expect one another to tweet each others stuff. It’s partly because we are friends yes and it’s partly because we enjoy each others tweets and content. It’s a mutual relationship/friendship.
I’m not suggesting you should always just do everything someone asks you. Your still missing the point here.
You’re clearly stating in your post that part of your strategy is to ask others to tweet your posts, yet you have such high quality control standards that it’s a rare occasion and unlikely that you will ever return the favor.
Let me give you a real life example. You had post a while back that was submitted to digg. You asked me for help which I was glad to go out of my way to help you via shouting the story and spreading the word about your story among the digg community. Not saying I did it single handedly but the story did hit the digg home page briefly. The next day I ran a couple of things by you that you refused to tweet. Now I don’t expect you or anyone to tweet something on demand but when someone goes out of their way to help you it would be nice (polite) to show some appreciation.
Your position is that you have such “high quality control standards” that it’s unlikely that you will ever return a favor. I know you are a nice guy and your intentions are good but frankly this does sound kind of snobish.
@Gerald Weber – There is a bit more to the story than that as you know. I did decline two of your guest posts etc. And you kept pushing. I have emails / stumble messages / gtalk messages from you in three digit figures. You sent them every day, several times a day for a long period of time: please RT this, please stumble this, please digg this, please reddit this… I was very nice to you and patient always responding to you. But I can only take a certain amount of it. That’s why I told you about my quality control. Then you stopped messaging me for some time and now you’re back again tweeting my stuff and commenting on my blog. And saying that you have problems because I do not retweet your stuff? It doesn’t make sense. You cannot force anyone to share your stories, no matter how many times you push it…
It’s true used to include you in my social media circle Digg, SU etc and then stopped due to reasons mentioned here.
Regarding the guest post you mentioned. Not really the topic of this conversation.
Attempting to stay on topic here I was simply voicing my opinion about your points on asking for tweets.
Of course Marko I’m not expecting you to start suddenly tweeting my stuff now that would be silly.
I do think mot of your posts are pretty good which is why I took the time to read this post and comment.
Marko, yeah you’re right! There’s been 2 or 3 official Thesis posts with our links side-by-side and then we went crazy on delicious in back-to-back days! No complaints here though!
Hope you are going to be the next problogger!
keep rocking
LiveDr
Amazing tips, Marko!!! Thanks a lot! I came here through the tweet of problogger!
I tweeted this cause its awesome and about tweeting.