What are the best practices for getting content, headlines, or tweets retweeted?

Hot news, unique insights and funny stuff.

BTW, don't be afraid to make a Call to Action: "Please RT."

If you are working up a posse you might show others you RT their stuff too. You might want to target high value tweeters with question/Kudos etc. using the @messages. This can give you extra exposure if they follow through.

Also, it is a social network so keep the majority of tweets (70%) personal and limit proselytizing (selling, promoting your business etc.) to the rest.

Even I never use David suggestion before but I agree to share interesting contents and adding your flavor to the tweet.

Hi Courtney! Great question. While the focus should always be on great content, regardless of how good it may be, you will struggle unless you have first managed to attract followers who are truly interested in what you are looking to share. Too many people focus on just how many followers they have not realizing that a vast majority of them have never spent even a moment looking deeper into what you do, the organization that you are aligned with or your specific areas of interest.

Start by taking a good look at your followers. What can you do to attract more of the right kind. Take a look at the users that have re-tweeted content and see what lists they have put together and which lists they follow. This will really help with targeted follows.

From there, focus on the content and make sure to keep it interesting. Good luck!

First and foremost, always make sure that your content is relevant, useful or entertaining. To get something retweeted make sure you say please. Tweets are much more likely to be retweeted if you ask nicely. It may seem simple, but it works!

Hi Courtney, this is really the kind of question one can write a book about. Unfortunately I can only answer in 4000 characters maximum.

The answer in fact depends.

- Is it a personal account or business account?
- What is the main purpose of it? Interaction? Promotion? Customer service? Spread?
- Do people clearly know what they can expect from the Twitter account?
- Etc.

There are complete studies - no kidding - on what works best in getting retweeted and retweeting, including the words to use, hashtags, frequency, tone of voice, you name it.

I agree with everyone here that content and value is important. Think of your tweet as a subject line in email or a call-to-action in search engine advertising if you really want maximum mentions and "conversions". But, obviousy, Twitter is more than that.

I can provide you plenty of tips if you narrow this a bit down. However: whatever the scientific rules of the art of retweets and of share-worthy content say, do not forget...personality.