Is there science to retweeting? Dan Zarella thinks so

Links, intelligent tweeting and forthright asking are some of the keys more likely to get your Twitter tweets retreated, according to a new study by scientist Dan Zarella.

He lists nine scientifically proven ways to get retweeted on Twitter.

Links were found to be three times more prevalent in retweets than other tweets, with bit.ly the URL shortener of choice (unsurprisingly).

The ten most popular words in retweets were:

1. you
2. twitter
3. please
4. retweet
5. post
6. blog
7. social
8. free
9. media
10. help

with “great” coming in 12th, “follow” in 15th, “how to” in 16th, “blog post” in 18th and “check out” in 19th place.

On the other hand, the words best avoided if you want your tweet to be spread around appear to be:

1. game
2. going
3. haha
4. lol
5. but
6. watching
7. work
8. home
9. night
10. bed

More “intellectual” tweets tend to do slightly better, based on their readability, as do those containing punctuation. Originality is also an important factor.

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Popular subjects that are often retweeted include work, religion, money, media and celebrities.

Finally, 4pm EST on a Friday is the time most tweets are redistributed.

So, is this a scientific way of making your tweets popular? I think certain aspects of these results just emphasise what many of us already know: be original, interesting, outward looking and useful, and your followers will likely want to spread what you have to say.