This infographic from MarketingThink‘s Gerry Moran caught our eye this week.

It backs up a lot of things we say in our workshops about how to write the perfect tweet – about length, hashtags, calls to action and more.

We know it’s not an exact science and a lot of things can influence whether your content gets retweeted, for example how topical it is and whether it gets picked up and shared by people with lots of influence.

And we don’t want to be strict about laying down rules, as that takes the fun out of it!

However, if you do want your tweets to be retweeted, following the tips that we offer in our social media workshops and laid out in this graphic will definitely help you on your way.

Here are some examples of brands who are following these suggestions:

Here DIY retailer B&Q is including a strong call to action in their tweet, telling you about the offer and including the link so you can get all the details.

Al Jazeera is hashtagging Syria because they know that many, many people are looking for updates on this topic. In doing this, their content will show up by anyone clicking on the hashtag #Syria.

Sage is keeping it short to make the tweet easily retweetable and so that people can leave a comment when they share the post too.

Wall Street Journal has a strong tone of voice here, mixing it up a bit with lots of punctuation and a question at the beginning to grab your attention.

Like B&Q and Al Jazeera they’re keeping the length of their tweet down by shortening the link using their own customised link shortener to help with brand recognition.