The Sounding Board

Get Your Clicks On!

  

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You can stare at your bit.ly stats all you want, but the numbers don’t lie. Your click-through rates (CTRs) aren’t as high as you want them to be. Sure, you have attracted the right followers, Tweeted the hottest topics and added some unique commentary. So what gives? Well, it could be you’re Tweeting on the wrong days. Or maybe your links are inserted too far into your Tweets. According to an infographic from a HubSpot social media guru, it could be a combination of factors, which luckily, are easy to implement into your Tweet production line.

Here is a quick rundown of what the research uncovered, but for exact numbers and comparisons, take a look at the infographic itself.

• First up is not maxing out your 140-character limit.  The study shows that Tweets between 120-130 characters generate the most clicks.
• Guilty as charged – I tend to place my links near the end of my Tweets. However, CTRs seem to be at their highest when links are placed approximately 25% of the way through Tweets.
• Don’t overwhelm your followers. Consistency is great, but spread your Tweets out over the course of a day. Otherwise, the more links you Tweet in a short period of time, the lower your CTR will be.
• While Tweets are designed to be quick, off-the-cuff messages, choosing the right words does make a difference. Consider using “via”, “@”, “RT”, “please” and “check”, and avoid “@AddThis”, “marketing” and “@GetGlue”.
• Paper.li has the right stuff. Apparently, the link aggregator’s common “daily is out” phrase generated the most clicks of all the other phases analyzed.  (Just what the heck is paper.li?)
• Verbs, verbs, verbs! The study found that Tweets with many adverbs and verbs saw higher CTRs than those with nouns and adjectives.
• Here’s one that I found particularly surprising – Tweets shared on Friday-Sunday had higher CTRs than those shared on Monday-Thursday.  I had imagined that people would be more engaged while at work, but it seems as though you have a better chance of catching readers’ attention on the weekends. More free time perhaps?
• Not everyone is a morning person. So let your readers digest their coffee and donut and Tweet them in the afternoon instead. But if you insist, consider doing both. As long as the content you’re sharing is useful and not in any way spam, try Tweeting it a couple times during the day. Most people don’t scroll back through their timeline to see what they’ve missed, so you might do everyone a favor.

If you’re not getting the readership you think your content deserves, then it might not hurt to implement some of these tweaks. Your message isn’t going to change, but the audience it reaches might. Report back with your stats and let me know if your CTRs have shot up at all. Good luck!

- Mary Evans