10 Easy Ways Law Firms Can Get More Twitter Retweets

Twitter offers a great way to extend your influence online: the retweet. When used wisely, retweets often lead to more engagement, more followers, and more web traffic.

Sharing relevant, timely and educational information with bold headlines are all factors that will help your content to be retweeted. To maximize your odds, there are several other factors to consider, however. Here are ten tips for getting more retweets for your law firm.

1. Find the best times to Tweet

Because newsfeed algorithms consider “recency” as a major ranking signal, posting your content when your followers are online is one of the simplest ways to improve your organic reach and get more retweets. Generally, the best time to post on Twitter is 8:00 AM on Mondays and Thursdays – but you should test times that work best for your audience. 

2. Simply ask for retweets

You’d be surprised how much traction you can get just by requesting them using phrases like “Please Retweet”. You know that calls-to-action (CTAs) are important on any platform and Twitter is no different. You can use CTAs for retweets like Please Retweet, Pls RT, or RT.

3. Use links

People have come to rely on Twitter to get news and updates and see what influential people think of current events. News and instructional tweets tend to get retweeted the most. That means that links to an online resource or news update have a higher chance to be retweeted. Microsoft Research’s Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter found that 52% of the retweet samples contain a URL.

4. Retweet more than you tweet

People (or law firms) who retweet more than they tweet their own material also get more retweets. Some experts suggest retweeting up to 15 items for every original tweet you produce. 

5. Avoid idle chit-chat or tweets about daily activities

In a list of the 20 least retweetable words, phrases like home, work, bed, night, haha, sleep, and tomorrow are present. That provides a hint that words describing daily activities or other mundane updates are not likely to be retweeted. Focus on interesting and valuable material if you want to get retweets. 

6. Use retweetable words

Just like there is an entire list of the least retweetable words, you can find a list of the most retweetable words. Along with words like “please retweet”, words like you, post, blog, social, and media tend to be amongst commonly retweeted terms. Research the words and phrases that are best for getting retweeted and review your tweets to ensure they are on the right track. You can use a free “Most Retweetable Words Finder” tool to analyze your specific topic and show you the top 20 tweetable words.

7. Ensure there’s room for retweets

Keep in mind that if you are using all 140 characters in your tweet, your followers will need to edit your tweets before they can add in their commentary and retweet, and they may not want to make the time for that. When you’re focusing on retweets, never use more than 110 characters in your Twitter post. At least leave room for people to say something like “Good article” when they retweet. 

8. Use hashtags

Tweets with hashtags are more likely to be retweeted, but you don’t want to go overboard. In a Microsoft Research study of 203,371 retweets, 18% of them contained #hashtags.

9. Include quotes

Quote posts are effective and persuasive because people are drawn to brief but meaningful, relevant, and engaging content. They tend to be popular for generating retweets, particularly if you can find ones that resonate with your audience. Quotes are easy to find online – just Google “best quotes for [topic] and see what strikes you. 

10. Know your audience’s language

Before you post, consider the way that people in your market speak and what terms they use. As an example, “cookie law” is a more popular term in the UK, vs. “cookie regulations” in the US. You can use Google Trends to localize your language. 

Takeaway

Twitter is a little different than many of the other social platforms out there today. It’s essential to focus on generating interest with only 140 characters, and gaining reach through retweets. For more insight into the current social media landscape and how to improve your performance, download our Social Law Firm Index report. 

Do you need help driving real business results through social media? Our social media offerings can be customized to your law firm’s needs and realities. In addition to social media management, we offer social media consulting and training for our clients. Contact us today for a free consultation.