Dan Zarrella, a social media and viral scientist, has done some interesting work in analyzing social media data to determine what triggers sharing.
In one study he analyzed Twitter data to find out what makes some Tweets more viral than others. The full “Science of Retweeting” report can be found here. Some of the things I found most interesting.:
- Asking people to retweet works, especially when you use the word “please”
- People like to retweet links to blog posts.
- Lists are big (something I have found in analyzing blog posts, as well). Approximately 69 percent of tweets that are retweeted contain links. (Maybe further proving that Twitter is a giant distribution engine, more than a social network.)
- The peak hour for retweets is 1 p.m. EST
In another recent study Dan found that stories with the word “video” were shared more than the average story on Facebook, and less than average story on Twitter, implying that Facebook may be a better platform than Twitter for getting videos to go viral.
Comments