Celebrity Blog Retweets Are the Way Forward.

“Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

-US talk show host Conan O'Brien's first tweet

If you'd have told me twelve months ago that I'd be chatting up porn stars in the near future, I would have laughed in your face. This, however, has become my reality. Sort of.

Just over a month ago I set myself a challenge: get a famous person to retweet a link to this blog- to pass it on to all of their followers.

The plan was to find someone who would agree to a retweet who had more followers than adult star Kerry Louise, at 43,000 followers. At the time, Ms Louise had already retweeted me and she had more followers than any other individual who'd retweeted me.

I started firing out a few requests for retweets to people, regardless of their stats. TV presenters, pop stars, radio presenters, big-name Hollywood actor types: no response. When you're Nicki Manaj and five million people are messaging you, I expect your Mentions tab would be a constant flow of information from people relentlessly pestering you twenty-four hours a day. You'd start to feel like Morgan Freeman's incarnation of God in Bruce Almighty, tuning into the prayers of millions all at once. Some geek from some northern British town banging on about his pretentious blog is not going to stop you from going about your business.

Well, not usually. I carried on asking people.

I tried other authors, magazine editors, pop stars from the UK and the US, politicians, actors from both sides of the Atlantic, and even a fake Michael Winner profile with 17,000 followers. Largely nothing. Most profiles gave not even the quietest little tweet of response. There was, however, one profession that I had a lot of success with- the porn star.

Here is the honours role, in size-order of followers. Correct at the time of the retweet. Most accounts will have more followers by the time you read this:

Viv Whitehead- arts director (2K)

Mark Santangelo- DJ (3K)

Georgie Darby- Babestation model (5K)

Lucy Love- porn star (7K)

Guido Fawkes- blogger (7K)

Camilla Jayne- Babestation model (8K)

Tommy Gunn- porn star (9K)

Katie K- porn star (12K)

Claire Dames- porn star (15K)

Tanya Tate- porn star (25K)

Charley Chase- porn star (25K)

Derek Haines- author (26K)

OliviaO' Lovely- former porn star (31K)

Kerry Louise- former porn star (44K)- Former top retweeter

Dylan Ryder- porn star (46K)

Puma Swede- porn star (58K)

Mariah Milano- porn star (67K)- Current top retweeter

Rachel Starr (63K, yes, another porn star) favourited my tweet. Well. It's a claim to fame.It wasn't passed on to her followers, but anyone can find it under the "Favourites" tab on her page.

Katie K followed me back. Hi Katie!

90's porn legend Jenna Jameson  “LOL”d at my initial tweet to her- she was “stuck on page 3 of Angry Birds”, and wanted help from her followers. “Not like you to be stuck on page 3 ;)”, I tweet-quipped, adding “(Does anyone outside of the UK get this joke?)”

Why I had so much success being retweeted by this sector of the media industry- when I had so little success elsewhere- is beyond me.

To make my project a little easier, I did a bit of research into add-on applications that work alongside Twitter.

Celebrity Tweet

Like a regular Twitter news feed in principle, only comprising purely of celebrity tweets, complete with links to their actual profiles. Updates every few seconds. Good for jumping on celebrities the moment they tweet. At least you know they're online at that moment and are available to read your message. The site also contains a link list full of Twitter accounts for hundreds of big names.

My Tweeter Karma

This site processes your account and allows a greater range of actions. Simply log in with your Twitter account and your followers and followings can be ordered by time of tweet, number of followers or number of followings. It also shows you who isn't following back, and gives you the option of unfollowing right there and then without going back to your actual Twitter account.

These functions have been the missing features on Twitter that we have become accustomed to on Facebook. I expect that Twitter will develop its own site to include this ordering system soon, rendering My Tweeter Karma obsolete. Facebook, for instance, only incorporated status comments once an external application allowed users to do it first. Once Facebook copied it- goodbye commenting app.

How to get a retweet

Keep your message short.

Say please. If they retweet, tweet again to say thanks. Remember your manners. They might be on the other side of the globe, but they're still people.

Throw in a compliment. If they're beautiful, tell them. If they're an inspiration, let them know.

The message may need to be more than 160 characters if you want to introduce yourself, name your blog, give a description of content and ask for a retweet. If so, you'll have to ask in a series of tweets. Make sure the tweet with the link in includes a good description of the site, so the person retweeting doesn't have to edit it. They should be able to hit the Retweet button resulting in their followers having a good idea what they're about to click on. You don't want a lack of trust at the crucial moment.

Modify your tweets a little for each person. Personalise messages. If the celeb checks your profile and sees that you've hammered the exact message to countless other people, they won't feel like you really care. They might feel like they're just being used. Wouldn't you? If it's an actor, tell him which role you liked best.

So: How well did the experiment work?

To compare, here are last month's blog stats.

Total hits: 18265

Hits last month: 4011

Referring URLs from Twitter this week: 17

Referring URLs from Twitter this month: 195

Here are this month's.

Total Hits: 25,721

Hits last month: 4245

Referring URLs from Twitter this week: None (the month-long challenge is over and I'm not pestering for retweets any more.)

Referring URLs from Twitter this month: 20 (Strangely low compared to last month. No, I don't get it either.)

But look at my stats!

I'm now going to stop pestering for retweets. I've had very few actual comments, relating to the blog, from those I asked for a retweet. It's been thrilling watching my stats surge, but I have the feeling this will be temporary success. Those who found my site from following adult actresses are unlikely to turn into loyal followers. There were no comments appearing on the blog during this time. Other than the actual retweets, there was no further involvement from people- either from the retweeters nor the people who followed the link.

If you're a blogger, do this as an add-on part of your networking. Maybe ask one person a day for a retweet. I've hammered this for over a month, purposefully. It paid off in stats, but I have also kept up with regular blog updates. Everything in moderation.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this. I take you seriously as a professional.