The reach of our tweets is really all about content. That's the most important determining factor!

Secondarily it's about timing.

Followers are nice to have, but small account tweets go viral, too.

Hashtags can be good if they are trending. Otherwise they tend not to help.

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Content is king.

The tweets that have the furthest reach tend to be those that really make a strong impression. Whether that content is the written word, a video, a photo, or some combination.

That's what we're really doing here. Providing content.

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That content should be unique and it should be constructive.

You want to build engagement and cultivate an audience.

Part of that is also related to how one shapes their timeline.

If it's so full of retweets and not your own content, how does your audience get to know you?

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I see a lot of accounts with too many retweets on their TL. I am certainly not telling anyone how to operate here. My only feedback is think about the experience your account provides from a follower's perspective.

Are they more likely to turn on notifications or mute you?

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Some social media experts recommend ratios of thirds:

-At least a third of our content should be that of our own tweets.

-Another third ideally should be replies we put out to interact with other accounts.

-The last third should be retweets.

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In terms of our own content, think about what resonates with your audience.

What's topical?

What's interesting?

What's *your* take?

All too often I see posts where someone is just pasting a news article w/o adding any of themselves to the tweet.

I think that's a mistake.

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Our own tweets are an opportunity to nurture our audience and build engagement.

People didn't follow us to get the news from CNN, or NPR. They followed us to get our views.

So we should be providing them, I think, in order to personalize and build the connection we have.

7/

Quality is always more important than quantity.

It's not about having the most tweets, it's about having good ones.

Sometimes it may take some time to find our voice, but once we do and we connect with our audience the process begins to become more natural, more organic.

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In terms of hashtags, after analyzing hundreds of thousands of tweets w/high engagement and reach using analytics tools, I found that hashtags that are *not* trending have no beneficial impact on organic reach. Unrelated hashtags tend to diminish reach (confusing viewers).

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While some groups use specific hashtags for themselves, because the casual Twitter user is typically not seeing any meaning to such tags these group hashtags tend not to increase the number retweets, likes, or replies.

I don't see value to such hashtag usage at this point.

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Followers are nice to have, but we have to be a bit mindful of concerns such as Twitter's policy against reciprocal follower inflation.

In fact, the way Twitter's algorithms tend to operate punishes accounts that follow more than they are following and even ratios as well.

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When you do have followers, it's optimal that they are engaged followers. Just having a follower doesn't mean anything if they don't interact with your tweets and replies at all.

In fact, followers that don't engage your content are likely to reduce your reach on Twitter.

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Interacting with your followers and other accounts on Twitter is constructive, though. It helps to create connectivity.

Twitter's algorithms look for accounts we engage (and vice versa) and optimize our feeds to show content from these accounts more often.

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Finally let's talk timing. The most viral tweets in the US tend to go out between 3pm and 8pm EST.

That's not a hard and fast rule. There *will* always be exceptions driven by events, quality of content, etc.

But, if you have tweet that isn't time sensitive, timing helps.

14/

We covered a lot of ground in this thread. I hope it helped to better understand how we can try to build engagement and dispelled some myths.

Remember that your Twitter account should really be your voice here--that's how the platform was built and that's what works best.

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