January 20, 2016 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When we talk an irresistible tweet, what do we mean? A tweet that gets a lot of retweets? Favorites? Replies?

All of the above, actually. A tweet’s value lies in its ability to reach as many people as possible, which means it has to be interesting enough that your audience shares it with their own communities.

While it’s next to impossible to guarantee a tweet will go ‘viral,’ if it does the following three things you’re off to a good start:

1. It engages.

Twitter is an open platform, which means even users who don’t follow you can still stumble across one of your posts if one of their followers favorites or retweets your tweet.

This accessibility is one of the greatest things about the platform -- with the right tweet, you can reach millions of new people.

To pique your audience’s interest and curiosity, start by asking questions and including interesting numbers in your tweet.

Are you one of the winners? A look at where the winning #Powerball tickets were sold. pic.twitter.com/hYBVRZOeFS — USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 14, 2016

And don’t be afraid to ruffle feathers. Some of my best tweets have been the most controversial. Here's the thing about the Internet: it’s full of noise. Not only does everyone have an opinion, but they’re usually clamoring to share it. Oftentimes, rising above the noise requires the risk that you will offend someone.

Besides, sharing an unpopular of polarizing opinion can spur conversation. While it’s rarely a good idea to offend someone on purpose, you can’t be afraid to express your opinion.

Please don't get mad at people for not celebrating Jesus's birthday on a day that is not, in fact, Jesus's birthday. — Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) December 25, 2015

Reddit is banning users for sharing #StarWarsTheForceAwakens spoilers. But harassment and rape threats are totes okay. Priorities. — Lyndsay Kirkham (@Lyndsay_Kirkham) December 20, 2015

Note: make use of Twitter Analytics to understand your tweet’s reach. FirstSiteGuide lists a few more great tools for Twitter analysis including hashtag analysis, click analysis, etc.

2. It references current trends in a smart, relevant way.

Trending social media posts, hashtags and content are always a safe bet when it comes to boosting visibility. A single tweet that presents a fresh take on a newsworthy event or sharing a meme on a trending topic can end up bringing in hundreds of followers and interactions.

Maybe this #MissUniverse incident is a sign that contests of men judging women shouldn't, you know, exist? #SteveHarvey — Charles Clymer (@cmclymer) December 21, 2015

DrumUp, a free content marketing tool, provides an easy way to track trends so you can incorporate them into your tweets. Set it up using keywords that best describe your audience’s interests, and the service will email you relevant trends every day. You can easily create and schedule tweets from within your DrumUp dashboard.

3. It includes a visual.

Search Engine Watch shared a study on the types of content that attract the most engagement on Twitter. The lowest engagement resulted from hashtags, the highest from images with attached URLs.

Thank you so much for all the love on my new blog post <3 https://t.co/1Y9AjAJVnj pic.twitter.com/XfiC5bcoSQ — Tanya Burr (@TanyaBurr) January 14, 2016

While this may seem like a hard and fast rule -- just add images to all your tweets -- it isn’t always that simple. What people respond to is going to differ, and you might need to experiment to figure out what your specific audience wants. Is it photos? Videos? Infographics? Funny text tweets? Only time (and testing) will tell.

Bonus tip: Optimize your site for irresistible tweets.

When your readers share your articles on Twitter, ideally those tweets should be MORE than just a title and a link. Instead, you want to inspire tweets that are creative and catchy to encourage organic re-shares and clicks-through

To achieve this, consider the following bonus tips for optimizing your pages for Twitter:

Make sure your site loads quickly, especially on a mobile device. No one will share your page on Twitter if it takes minutes for them to access your site. Use these tips to speed up your site.

Use the "Tweet this quote" feature to make it easy for your audience to create tweets that spotlight interesting stats, discussion-provoking questions, etc. Here's how it works.

Visual content is not the only way to express more within one 140-character tweet -- Twitter cards also allow you to fit more information within one tweet. You can use this plugin to enable Twitter cards for your website. Meanwhile, Twitter Cards Validator allows you to preview your pages after someone shares them on the platform.

Have an idea on what makes an incredible tweet? Let us know in the comments!