New York, Dec 19 (IANS): A study that analysed two million tweets has found images in a tweet increases chances of its re-tweet more than four times.

The study by digital marketing agency Stone Temple Consulting from Framington, Massachusetts, found that using images, hashtags and links in a tweet had an even greater impact on engaging other users than it was thought.

Tweets with media were re-tweeted 68 percent of the time compared to 30 percent of text-only tweets.

Also, 74 percent of tweets with media were favourited while for text-only tweets the figure was 38 percent.

Tweets with hashtags got re-tweeted 49 percent of the time, while 32 percent was the figure for those without the hashtags.

One surprising result of the analysis was that the time of day was found to have a very little effect on chances of being re-tweeted, the percentage of getting re-tweeted varied only 35 to 37 percent over a 24-hour period.

Embedding a link in tweets was found to have an impact too - there was a 10 percent hike in chances of being re-tweeted, up from 33 percent of tweets without links.