How to get more retweets on a post that deserves them
Good posts stall at zero shares for reasons that have little to do with quality. The three things that decide whether a reader passes one on.
By Leon Fischer
A repost is a public act. X renamed the button, but the deal underneath it has not changed: your sentence lands on somebody else's timeline, unaltered, with their name above it. That is a far bigger favour than a like, which is why good posts sit at zero shares while the heart row fills up. Nobody outside X can see how the timeline picks what to show, so this guide stays on the parts you can work on: what makes a sentence worth somebody's name, and what you do in the hour after you press post.
A repost and a quote post are two different favours
They sit in the same menu and they are not the same event. Tapping the arrows sends your post onward untouched, adding nothing of their own. Choosing Quote opens a composer, so what goes out is their post with yours embedded and their words on top. X keeps the two apart in its own numbers: the developer documentation lists retweet_count and quote_count as separate fields on a post, alongside like_count, reply_count, bookmark_count and impression_count.
Write towards that split. A finished statement collects plain reposts, because there is nothing left for anyone to add. A post with a gap in it collects quotes, because the gap is what people fill. If your quote count runs well ahead of your reposts, read the top three quotes before you write anything else. They are usually correcting you, and the correction is often the post you should have published.
Write the line somebody else would put their name under
Nobody reposts to do you a favour. They repost because the post says something about them, and a plain repost carries no wording of theirs to soften it, so whatever you wrote is what they are signing.
There is a ten second test. Before you post, name one real account you expect to share it, then write out the sentence that person would put above your post if they quoted it instead.
If the best you can manage is 'this' or 'so true', it is not shareable yet. The fix is almost always subtraction. Cut the hedge in the middle, drop the second claim, and leave one thing a reader could agree or disagree with. A single clear claim gets handed on. The same point wrapped in three qualifications gets a like from somebody who did not feel like arguing.
The four shapes that travel, and the one that never does
What gets reposted in any field falls into a handful of shapes. The first is the useful thing: a number, a procedure, a template a stranger can use this afternoon. Passing it on is a small favour to their own followers, so it costs them nothing socially.
The second is the sentence somebody already believed and had never phrased well, where reposting is agreement, and agreement is cheap to sign. The third is the post that helps a third party rather than you, a job opening, a fundraiser, a lost dog, where sharing reads as ordinary decency.
The fourth is the joke their timeline in particular will get, which is why a joke that travels in one field dies in the next. The shape that never travels is the announcement about you. If the news matters, write the part a stranger can use and let the announcement sit under it.
Put the shareable part where it reads without a tap
Most people judge a post from the crop in front of them and never open it. If the payoff sits behind a Show more, behind a link, or in the second post of a thread, you lose everybody who would have shared it.
So write the visible part to stand alone. In a thread, the opening post has to earn a share by itself, and the rest is for people who already stopped scrolling. In an image, keep the point near the middle, because a tall image is shown as a centre crop in the timeline and the edges are what disappear.
A draft sitting close to the limit is worth pasting into the character counter, which counts the draft and flags the links so you can decide whether the post stays single or becomes a thread. That page notes X counts links and emoji slightly differently at publish time, so treat the number as a guide.
Read the numbers X gives you, and know which ones only you can see
Anyone can read the public row under a post: replies, reposts, quotes, likes, bookmarks and impressions. X defines an impression as a count of the times the post appeared on somebody's screen, and it is not counted once per person, so a reader who scrolls past you three times is three impressions. The figures for what a reader did next, profile clicks and link clicks, are not public.
X's documentation calls those non-public metrics, available only on posts you own and only for posts from the last 30 days, which sets the rhythm: whatever you want to learn from a post, learn it inside the month. Two readings matter. Plenty of impressions and no reposts means people saw the post and were not willing to sign it, which is a writing problem. Plenty of bookmarks and no reposts means it was useful but not endorseable, which is the normal shape for anything instructional, because saving a checklist says nothing about the person saving it.
The hour after you press post is part of the job
Treat the post as unfinished for the first hour. Answer the early replies properly, because a real answer keeps the thread alive in front of the people reading it, and quotes often come from somebody who replied first and then had more to say. Put corrections, sources and caveats in a reply rather than starting over: deleting a post and publishing a clean version puts you back at zero and throws away the replies and bookmarks it had collected, while screenshots of the original keep circulating anyway.
If somebody quotes you with a bad reading, answer the reading and leave the person alone. The replies you receive are better evidence than any published best time, because a reply proves somebody was in the app that minute. Note when they arrive over a couple of weeks and post into the block where they cluster.
When an order is the wrong tool, and the narrow case where it is not
Most people who search this question do not need to buy anything. If nobody wants to put their name to the sentence, a bigger number under it does not change the sentence, and the honest work is cutting the post in half and posting it again next week. A count buys one thing: it changes how the row under a post reads to somebody arriving cold.
That is narrow, and it still matters in places. A launch post on a handle nobody has heard of, a link you are about to send to people who will judge it by what sits under it. In those cases Twitter retweets move the repost row on one public post, in ten steps from 30 up to 2,000, and one order can be divided over as many as 66 posts as long as each gets at least 30.
If the emptier row is the hearts, Twitter likes start at 25 on a public post. Size either against the likes already there rather than your follower line, because the repost row almost always sits below the like row, and a repost figure above the likes is the one shape that reads oddly. The rest of what exists for the platform is on the Twitter hub, and none of it writes a word: the post goes out exactly as you published it.
What ordering looks like, and what it cannot promise
You paste the address of the public post and nothing else. Our link check resolves a Twitter address and shows the target back, which is how you confirm you pasted the post you meant. It will not tell you a post has been removed or an account set to private, so open the link in a logged-out window first.
From there everything lands in one run. Payment is card or cryptocurrency, chosen at checkout. The order page carries your order ID as the heading, one status out of Payment pending, Processing or Delivered, the payment method and its state, the total, and each item with its name, quantity, target, price and badge.
Where a service offers a refill, a count that falls back within 30 days of delivery is topped up again at no charge, and both Twitter items above offer one. Past that window nobody can promise anything, because X removes accounts on its own schedule and whatever they had reposted leaves with them. Anything unclear before you spend money goes to support@mrfollows.com, answered within 24 hours.
Quick checklist
- Name the account you expect to share the post, and write the sentence they would put above it before you write the post itself.
- Cut the draft down to one claim a reader could agree or disagree with.
- Keep the payoff in the part that reads without a tap, and in the top half of any image.
- Read reposts, quotes and bookmarks as three separate answers rather than one score.
- Do your reading early, since the click figures X's API returns for your own posts only cover the last 30 days.
- Clear the first hour for replies, and put every correction in a reply instead of a new post.
Frequently asked
Why do my posts get likes but no retweets?
A like and a repost are different favours. A like costs nothing and stays on your post, while a repost puts your wording in front of somebody else's followers under their name. Posts that clear that bar usually make one clear claim rather than a paragraph of qualifications. Check the bookmark count too, since useful posts get saved privately by people who would never share them.
Should I ask people to repost?
Rarely, and specifically. 'Repost this if you have hired somebody this way' reads as a real request, because it says who the post is for. 'RTs appreciated' reads as noise. The ask works best where sharing does something for a third party, and it turns into wallpaper if it sits under everything you publish.
Do quote posts count towards the repost number?
They are counted separately. X's own documentation keeps retweet_count and quote_count as different fields, so a post can gather a hundred quotes while the repost row barely moves. Read them as answers to two questions: reposts say people were willing to sign your wording, quotes say they had something to add.
Is it worth deleting a post that got no reposts and putting it up again?
Deleting clears the post from your profile without giving you a different audience. The people who scrolled past that wording once will scroll past it again, and you lose the replies and bookmarks it had collected. The rewrite is the part that helps: change the opening line, cut the hedge in the middle, and post it at the hour your replies say people are around.
Can I buy quote posts here?
There is no quote post item here. A quote is somebody writing their own sentence on top of your post, so the only repost figure an order moves is the plain one. What the shop sells for the platform is followers, likes, retweets, views, impressions, bookmarks and poll votes. What the shop sells for the platform is followers, likes, retweets, views, impressions, bookmarks and poll votes.
Will buying reposts make a post spread on its own?
Treat that as unknown, because nobody outside X can see how the timeline decides what to show, and any confident story about it is invented. What an order does is visible and much smaller: the row under the post reads differently to somebody arriving cold. Whether the post travels is still decided by the post.