If you are tweeting it’s natural that you want your content to be retweeted. (For newbies, “retweeting” is when a recipient of your message, forwards it to her followers.)
Having your content exposed to more people is a key way to build your following. It’s a particularly honest way to build your following as only strangers who are impressed by your content will choose to follow you. Very meritocratic.
People love links.
So what content is most likely to be retweeted? Take a gander to the left at this graph from Hubspot.com which shows that tweeters who usually contain links in their tweets are the most retweeted.
This tallies with what we know about successful content – don’t talk about yourself, share something of value. Sometimes that value may be found courtesy of a link to your site but often it will be a link to a news site, a blog, a picture.
Note that neither inspirational quotes nor bitchy 140-character diatribes about conservative politicians fall into this category. Nor do “Good morning / good evening” tweets.