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Shorter tweets garner greater engagement

Tweets containing less than 100 characters receive 17% higher engagement than longer tweets, according to new research from Buddy Media.

In analysing user engagement with approximately 320 Twitter handles of some of the world’s biggest brands, the social enterprise company found that keeping things short and sweet led to more replies and retweets from followers.

The research also showed that the use of hashtags can be problematic. Although tweets with hashtags receive twice the levels of engagement than those without, tweets with two or more hashtags lead to a 17% drop in engagement.

Retweet rates also rise by 86% in tweets that contain links and anything sent between 8am-7pm receives a 30% higher engagement than anything outside that time frame. This window of engagement on the microblogging platform contrasts with similar research the firm conducted into Facebook posts that saw the opposite held true.

“Twitter is an integral part of every brand’s social marketing strategy, so we took a deep dive to see how they can increase engagement within their communities,” says Buddy Media vice-president of analytics and insights Tami Dalley. “It’s more important than ever to make sure your brand is taking advantage of best practices on Twitter.”

According to a report from Buddy Media and Booz and Co last year, 77% of brands consider Twitter to be a priority social media platform. Earlier this year, Twitter reported that it sees 400 million tweets published on the platform every day.

David Hing, London