Dan Zarrella on what makes people share content on Twitter
“Ideas don’t spread because they’re good,” Dan Zarrella told an audience at the recent AMP Summit in Washington DC.
That’s not a popular notion with bloggers and other content producers. If you spend a lot of time polishing your content, it can be hard to accept that those ideas won’t find an audience on their own merits.
“Sometimes I find things I wish weren’t true,” he says. But Zarrella’s conclusions are based on his own research of retweet data, which shows that certain characteristics make an idea more likely to spread on Twitter — and quality isn’t one of them.
A few of Zarrella’s key takeaways:
- Scarcity rules. Tweets that center on news — particularly urgent information — are more likely to be retweeted. Content that is informative or entertaining also spreads well because these qualities are relatively rare. More mundane tweets, such as personal observations, get less traction because they’re something everyone already has, he notes. If you want your tweets to spread, their value has to be readily apparent.
- Choose your words carefully. Tweets that focus on nouns — particularly “you” — are more retweetable. Tweets focusing on personal actions — “watching,” “going” or “listening” for example — tend to be less sharable.
- Tell people what to do and they’ll do it. It might sound cheesy, but Zarrella says that if you add “Please Retweet” to a tweet, people are more likely to share it. The same goes for other calls to action — telling people what to do increases their likelihood of following through, he notes.
- Variety is a constant. Zarrella is quick to point out that many of the best practices revealed by his findings don’t work as well if used to excess. Instead of slavishly repeating of formula, Zarrella says users should experiment with different tactics and develop patterns that help their content find new audiences without becoming stale.
Throughout his presentation, Zarrella stressed the importance of really understanding your audience — what they like, what they need and what they believe others in their network are likely to benefit from. Perhaps the most telling finding from his presentation is that when people are asked why they share content — either one-on-one or with a group — the most popular answer is “relevance.” Ideas may not spread because they’re good — but if you can find a way to make your good ideas useful and relevant, you stand a better shot at seeing them adopted and shared.
Image credit, ayzek, via iStockphoto
Posted by Paul on October 19th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Um, how does this first point not support the content argument?
"Content that is informative or entertaining also spreads well because these qualities are relatively rare. More mundane tweets, such as personal observations, get less traction"…
Yes, good content is informative and entertaining, and not mundane.
Posted by ZombieCucumber on October 19th, 2010 at 10:37 am
How can content be "good" without also being "relevant"?
Posted by Tweets that mention Dan Zarrella on what makes people share content on Twitter | SmartBlog on Social Media -- Topsy.com on October 19th, 2010 at 10:41 am
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Posted by Deb on October 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Forgive my candor but this post is nothing short of ridiculous. Did you read it? It's riddled with contradictions and makes no sense whatsoever. The point I "think" you were trying to make is nonsense. Basically what you said is that if we use nouns and have a clear call to action almost anything becomes shareable and content has nothing to do with it. But then you go on to say that informative and entertaining information gets the most traction (DUH). And this is based on a focus group of one?! I get enough junk mail in my inbox, please take the time to make sure you read your own blog posts before sharing them with others.
Posted by Deb on October 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
AMEN
Posted by jstanchak on October 19th, 2010 at 11:44 am
Hey Deb,
Being candid is always ok by me. The point isn't that any of these things are silver bullets. It's that even really good content needs help to find an audience. It's not enough to create interesting content — you need to be able to explain why people should care. How is it interesting? How is it informative? The rest are tools you can use to help your content travel — but only to an extent. They're not replacements for good content. It's a team effort. Maybe that doesn't sound groundbreaking to you — but like I noted above, there are still a lot bloggers and other content producers out there that still think that if they do great work, the audience will come to them. Sorry you didn't dig the post. I'll try harder next time.
Jesse
Posted by ZombieCucumber on October 19th, 2010 at 11:58 am
@jstanchak –
I think we might be in agreement.
Content that is "informative or entertaining", but not "always self-evident" just isn't good.
Posted by jstanchak on October 19th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I don't know about that — though I can respect your opinion.
I can think of a lot of creators (writers, video makers, musicians, etc.) whose work just totally did not work for me the first time I encountered it — only to have me do a total 180 later and fall in love with it. And I think it's because I wasn't being shown how that work was relevant to me that first time. Still, I know plenty of people who say that if it doesn't grab you the first time around, it's garbage. I'll have to think about that a little more before I really take a stand. Maybe in another (hopefully better written) post down the road.
Posted by How to Spread your Message | Mark Ramsey Media LLC on October 19th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
[...] are his key points, from Smartblogs.com: Scarcity rules. Tweets that center on news — particularly urgent information — are more likely [...]
Posted by links for 2010-10-19 : The ChipCast || by Chip Mahaney on October 19th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
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Posted by Sean Clark on October 19th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Informative. Entertaining. Relevant.———–Check.
Boy was I headed in the wrong direction.
Posted by Jimbo on October 25th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Unfortunately, Twitter – imho – is increasingly becoming less and less about [valuable] content exchange, life-enhancing knowledge and a power for good but more and depressingly more a platform for shameless self-promotion by disengaged 'celebrities', wannabes, the I-Generation [as in me, me, me] and their sycophantic followers. I'm about 76% bored of it already.
Posted by Why great content is never enough « FCEdge Powerful Marketing Communications on October 29th, 2010 at 5:12 am
[...] The best ideas aren’t guaranteed to be the ones that travel farthest, warns Dan Zarrella. A painstaking analysis of retweet data suggests that messages spread best through Twitter when they carry valuable information, are carefully phrased and include clear calls to action. “Ideas don’t spread because they’re good,” Zarrella said. SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media [...]
Posted by How to get ReTweeted and get your content shared on Twitter on December 8th, 2010 at 5:08 am
[...] really like the summary that that Jesse Stanchak wrote after seeing Dan Zarrella speak at a summit in [...]