public relations…social media…commmunications…marketing. Repeat.

Okay, so I’m still new to the blogging game. Very new. Although I appreciate my retweets and my new subscribers (I really do!!), I want more! Who doesn’t?!? I have a message that I want to get out to an audience of like-minded people. Can’t do that if no one is paying attention to you, right? So, if you are new to the blogging game like me and are interested in learning how to get your RTs up and get noticed, I suggest you check out the below list compiled by Stanford, a writer at Pushing Social.

1. Bad Retweet Button Placement:

Readers can’t click buttons they can’t find.  Also, people will not click a button that doesn’t say, “tweet”.  My retweets sucked until I quit being cute with the button.  I put a large green button at the top of my post. And…Voila! I started getting retweets.  Sometimes the best solutions are the easiest.

2. Boring Headlines

Savvy content curators could beat Lois Lane to a story any day of the week.  In order to stay relevant, twitter aficionados constantly hunt for the interesting, bizarre, paradoxical, and practical.  That means they make instant judgment calls about your post based on your headline.

Your utterly factual headline will get ignored.  However, if you write a neck-snapping work of art then you’ll get their attention.  This isn’t as hard as you think and the web is littered with great spots to find headline ideas.

3.  Mumbling

What?

A blogger mumbles when they write 3 paragraphs of plodding prose before they get to their point.

Most people don’t have time for you to slowly build to your “aha” crescendo.  If you make your reader wait for the punch line, you will never get the retweet.

That’s why I always tell my Blogging Bootcamp students to drop the first paragraph of their blog posts.  Many of them find that their post instantly jumps in quality.

4. Small Audience

New bloggers don’t have big audiences.  It’s simple logic.  No audience = no retweets.  So, before you set your expectations to high, work on driving traffic to your blog.  There are zillions of posts out there that talk about how to do this.

However, I do have one tip.  Start tweeting.  Find the big names in your niche and follow them.  Go one-step further and follow the people they follow.

Next find a tweet chat that focuses on your niche.  Actively participate in the tweet chat and start to build a quality crowd of followers.  Once you get to 100 followers, start promoting your posts.  It will take time but it will work.

5.  Shy Audience

Some people won’t retweet.  They may leave a comment or even link to your post, but they won’t retweet.  Why?  There are a couple of good reasons –

For example, business audiences have to be careful about affiliations. Retweeting your post could violate a company policy.  Other audiences may be less “Twitter-focused” than the social media crowd.  Although they appreciate your post, they hate using twitter.

Whatever the reason are you will need to switch strategies if your audience can’t or won’t use Twitter.

6. Wrong Type of Posts

Some posts are more retweetable than others. Deeply personal, diary-type entries have a tough type getting shared.  Readers feel that the post is semi-private and are unsure if it’s supposed to be retweeted.

On the other hand, the ever-popular (and effective) list post is the retweet champ.  Readers can immediately see the value of “resource” posts and quickly RT it to their audience.

Reviews are also great retweet material.  Last in the list would be the Opinion Post (or the rant).  If the opinion post has a great headline, then it will be spread far and wide.  But be careful, your rant can be so controversial that it could be too hot to handle. Most bloggers don’t mind a provocative post but many will avoid spreading personal attacks or controversy.

7. Your Post Just Sucks

I’ve written my fair share of posts that just fell flat. My muse decided to hide out. Or, I made the mistake of forcing a topic that just wasn’t there.

So, what did you guys think about this post? Good enough to retweet, eh? Well, you see those little buttons at the bottom of this post? Just click on the one that says Twitter and follow the instructions for me, will ya? Thanks a bunch!