One thing I didn’t mention – I think that a big part of the flow-on effect here comes from retweets. On his first tweet I circled that number in red (though it’s hard to see) – that post had 95 RTs (and that’s just new-style ones!) – his tweet for my post had 7. I think those numbers reflect both the factors that you outline, as well as the quality of the posts.

I do need to get better at writing post titles too – it’s by far the worst part of my blogging right now, I think.

Your stats at the end are really interesting. I’ve had similar experiences where the same posts in different contexts have completely different patterns of diffusion. I think you’re right about the brand differences.

I think you’re over-analysing here. Quality of the post doesn’t count, a click is a click. All that counts here is the exact phrase of the original tweet, and Tim’s add-on (especially Tim’s add-on content) – because it is that what will make people click

Of course tweets from Tim are scarce, and valuable. But hardly anyone reads them all, as he has a wide range of interest

Reading tweets is much like speed-reading: you pick a few words to get a general idea
Only reading the first 3-5 words of a tweet is usually enough to assess its interest

Let’s put that to the test!
Here’s the first tweet:

“Without a doubt” is a strong attention-drawer, “the best post” (next 3 words) keeps the attention there, and makes it even stronger. “iPad” still hooks your attention, and “Overhyped Flop” and “Great Design Thinking” are all very strong words and word combinations. A contradiction, strong words, superlatives, wow!

Just read it quickly and you won’t even see or record @VenessaMiemis but simply click it. Heck, even if you have a strong dislike for Venessa you probably will click it anyway. Such strong words!

Now, for the other tweet: (not meant as offensive, just trying to be the average Tweeter here scanning a few hundred or thousand tweets a day)

“Nice piece”. Hmmm, well, if bored I might read the rest of the tweet. Hardly excited yet
“Aggregate, Filter & Connect” pffff that’s a lot of words that don’t make sense together. Aggregate is not very common, and “fancy”. And how or why should I filter and connect? Gee this is complex
“for Smaller Firms” oh this is about small firms, gee why should i care about that? What’s a small firm anyway?
“as a case study” a case study… wow it’s a study, can’t use that right away, academical, bleh

I really lose my (MY) interest at the Aggregate, Filter & Connect part, and wouldn’t have bothered at all when busy because it says “Nice piece”

Here’s my experiment: write any post, no matter what the content is. Have a great title for it, strong words, important words, up-to-date and hot words, superlatives, contradictions. Make a great tweet for that, and you’re halfway because a lot of people will just click the link because the tweet itself hooks their attention
The hard part: for Tim (or others) to retweet this, it needs to be a good post…

I get 50-75 clicks/ post on average, with 0, 1 or 2 retweets. When I post the same posts on my company’s blog, I get 20-30 clicks / post, with 5-10 retweets
My conclusion? My followers don’t retweet much, but like my posts (they keep clicking my tweets about new blog posts). My company’s followers retweet a lot, but don’t like my company’s posts much. What does that say? My followers don’t feel the urge to show me they read my post, and when they like it they’ll just comment. I’m an entirely different brand than my company…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by timkastelle: New blog post: Get Better Ideas, Not More – #innovation success depends on quality, not quantity http://bit.ly/baVXJA...