The art of retweeting
I’m not one of those people who likes to go around saying, “This is the way I do it so this is how you should do it. Otherwise you’ll smell funny for 7 years.” Rather, I like to give my opinion, and if you want to debate the issue you are more than welcome.
Given that, I firmly believe that a lot of Twitterers need a retweeting intervention.
What on earth is retweeting?
OK, let me back up a moment and give a really quick background of what I’m talking about, just in case you are new to Twitter or aren’t on Twitter at all (in which case this post probably doesn’t hold a lot of interest for you, so thanks for making it this far!). So when you’re on Twitter and you see a tweet someone has made, you have 3 options. You can reply, which means you are talking to them. You can “favorite” the tweet, which is kind of like bookmarking it (this is for your use, but anyone can see your favorites). The third option is that you can “retweet” the tweet. This means that if you really like what the person is saying, you can click “retweet” so that another person’s tweet actually becomes yours. It’s like a Twitter version of quotation marks. This allows you to tell all of your followers, “Hey guys, check this funny/smart/sad/moving tweet.”
The One Click Method Versus The Cumbersome Method
If you do “retweeting” the way Twitter wants you to do it, it’s really easy. You just click “Retweet.” It’s like the “like” button on Facebook. Click click click. A lot of people, I think, view retweeting as a method of interaction, promotion, and/or engagement, so they retweet a lot and don’t have to do a whole lot more. So, someone’s profile could end up looking like this:
This is what you see a lot in profiles. Retweet after retweet. Sometimes it’s not even articles that people retweet. Sometimes you’ll see a profile where the person is retweeting other people retweeting them.
Is this methodology *wrong*? I can’t really say that. But here’s the thing. If your last 20 posts consist mostly of your own tweets and retweets that are simple echoings of what other people are saying, are you truly interacting with others? If you look at the tweets that the person above retweeted, most are about business and Social Media, and then one is about pigging out at Christmas. Why is that there? Did they think it was funny? It definitely doesn’t seem to fit in with other things. Why are they retweeting the other things there? Are these blog posts that are controversial? Are they really well written? I have no idea. For all I know, this account could belong to a spam bot that just retweets things every few minutes.
This brings me to the “cumbersome” method of retweeting. It involves adding a bit of a comment before or after what you’re posting that not only shows that you actually read or engaged with what you’re retweeting, but it also reveals something about you to your followers.
This can’t be done so far as I know with a simple click. The method I use is to copy a person’s tweet, leave my comment, put an RT @username and then paste their comment in. So it would look like this:
Now this retweet was a bit complex because I wasn’t the first person to see this fantastic post. @Kikolani saw it, my friend @pushingsocial then saw it from her stream, and I saw it from his. Instead of leaving a longer comment myself, I let @bbrian017 know that I thought it was a great post and that I saw it thanks to two people I respect a great deal. That’s a lot to say in a retweet – it lets the person I’m retweeting as well as my followers know a lot of information – about what I share, who I take recommendations from, and more.
When retweeting goes a bit over the top
Friday was one of the days that I was away more than usual from my Twitter and blogging world. When I checked on things late in the day, I saw that there were quite a few mentions of my name. In looking at things a bit more, I realized that the following had happened.
Someone did a “Follow Friday” post listing me and about 7 other people
Then, about 3-4 of the other folks retweeted the original #ff post (a couple did add a “TY” at the beginning)
I think 1 or 2 people then retweeted THOSE posts
This is where the easy access to retweeting becomes a bit of a hazard. Ask yourself, before you hit retweet, whether your followers really need to see this tweet. Actually, that’s probably good advice regardless of what you’re tweeting, but in any case, will your followers truly benefit from seeing lots of retweets of your follow Friday mentions? If someone says something nice about you, do you need to retweet that?
Here’s something I have learned on Twitter. If you say something to someone and people want to see the other side of the conversation, they can visit that other person’s profile and look. With that in mind, 99% of the time, I will not retweet a nice thing someone says about me. Rather, I’ll simply and genuinely say, “Thank you very much!” The only time I stray away from this is if someone does a blog post that mentions me, because I want to help them drive traffic to their site in that case. Even then, though, I don’t do the one-click retweet method. I usually write my own tweet and then put a link to their post in.
Another disadvantage to one-click retweeting
One other quick point I’d point out for those of you who are fans of metrics. When you tweet out a link, you are able to track how many people click that link most of the time. For example, I use bit.ly, and I can see how much traction those links get. If you simply retweet someone else’s tweet, you’re not getting your own trackable link. You’re just sending their link out.
Retweeting is a gift
I like to think of retweeting as a gift – it’s a way of telling someone that what they said was so great that you want to share it with all of your followers. You want to give up some of your platform to someone else. If you retweet people all of the time, it becomes less of a gift and more of a “ho hum” activity. No one will really feel special if you retweet them because you seem to retweet everybody. In my own case, I prefer to retweet by not really “retweting,” but rather by promoting. If someone does a great blog post, I’ll explain why I recommend reading it and then tweet a link out rather than just retweeting their own post about it. Again, this shows them that I took the time to read it and offer thoughts about it, and it also gives my followers more insight into why the heck I’m posting this information for them. Everybody wins.
How are you retweeting?
Does any of this resonate with you? How do you handle retweets right now? If you tend to hit the “retweet” button a lot, give the “cumbersome” method a try, and let me know how it works for you. And of course, as always, if you have any questions, just let me know!
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Thank you Margie for the refresher. Excellent information for the new user and for the more experienced user who might retweet without thinking (ie #FF of which I am guilty on occasion).
You are quite welcome. I’m so very glad it was helpful!
Being a TweetDeck user, I use both – it really depends on the kind of tweet it is. I’ve found the “Proper Retweet” method (1-click) better for preserving context. If the tweet’s a reply, or has any other Twitter meta data associated with it, the 1-click Retweet preserves this.
T’other method – which I notice on some apps is called “Quote Tweet” is better for adding commentary, or continuing conversations.
There’s also the vaunted third option – the Favorite button. Some people use this as thoroughly as Delicious, to keep their records in line. Twitter keeps “Favorited” tweets longer than normal.
In any case – I don’t think there’s a better way, but I certainly think not enough people put thought into which method to use when. 🙂
Because I have not found my groove blogging, I Retweet a lot. I tend to Tweet others blog post I think is useful, inspirational or are just practical informations people might use. I like to comment with my Retweets 1. To show the originator I’ve actually read their post. 2. To show my followers I’ve actually read the post.
If someone says something nice about me, I will Retweet it, but I will remove my name (@) so that it doesn’t show up in my steam again and so it doesn’t look too vain.
I am glad you started your post by saying you are not “telling us how to use Twitter,” because so much is happening in the various Trends and chats, there are no certain rules.
What you shared are simple courtesies. If you share a resource, state the resource. Kinda learned that in high school when writing your first term paper. Give credit where credit is due.
Nice post Marjie.
Thank you!
Yes, a lot of my Social Media methodologies revolve around simple courtesies that seem easy to forget about once you’re online – or people are so desperate to be courteous that they go overboard. I think a lot of people who retweet have the best of intentions, but if you do nothing but retweet, you are really not offering yourself or your followers something really valuable.
Just my opinion 🙂
I might be a bit too picky when it comes to syntax but I find myself using the “cumbersome” method quite often to write the tweet in my own words and then I use the slashtag /via at the end of the tweet to give attribution.
I suggest to clients to only use RT when they are rebroadcasting a tweet verbatim from the original tweeter. I really like the native RT style and use it as much as I can but not all tweets are crafted to my preference and I don’t want to attribute words to someone that didn’t phrase it a particular way.
Also due to the varying methods of RTing a tweet an become mangled in the process of sharing.
Here’s my take on RT & /via and why it matters. http://netkno.ws/RTvsVIA
Enjoyd the post
-@tsudo
Very cool! Thanks for the link!
You are right, like most things in Social Media there isn’t a single best way to do things. Your methodology sounds very good. It’s not all or nothing for me either and I do occasionally adjust the tweet a bit myself 🙂
I do agree with you on many points, Margie – but on the point of Rewteeting the links of others instead of your own, I have to diverge from your view.
I am OK with adding to the link stats of others – I mean if you tweet a link & measure its traction, wouldn’t you expect that the one who tweeted the original link is tracing their clicks as well? I like to spread the “reach” if you will, as I have less to gain from the tweet link than he or she who wrote it. (<—confusing enough?)
Now, for my OWN posts, or for links whose RT chain length has been maxed out, I will start a new link and note the original author. That's to cut clutter, though, not to capture stats.
And that it NOT to say that click stats are not important to each twitter member; I just happen to be in a different place with link tracking than those who may have a more tangible business purpose for their twitter presence.
Well, I just thought I’d toss that in as an afterthought. I don’t worry a great deal about metrics of any kind, but I will say this – if there’s a post that I really think it’s important people see, I will use my own link so that I can see if people saw my retweet of the person’s post. That gives me a measure on whether I should tweet it out again.
Certainly nothing wrong with using the other person’s links though – flexibility is king 🙂
I have always found it very curious to have people retweeting a compliment to them. I also agree that retweeting followfriday recommendations with a huge list of people kind of defeats the purpose! I personally retweet in different ways depending what message the tweet is sending. If i see someone tweets something very interesting and most of my followers might be interested in following that person i might even use the simple RT so it appear like he sent the tweet.
I will take your tips and re-evaluate how i RT you did make me thnk on some of the ways I RT.
Well thanks, Raul. That’s the greatest compliment a blogger can receive, as you know. Let me know what you come up with!
Nice post Margie.
FYI: I use Tweetdeck to manage my Twitter, FB and LinkedIn communications, which gives you a prompt when hitting RT on a msg: ReTweet Now or Edit and ReTweet. The first is the ‘simple’ method you outlined, the second option allows for, well, a simpler “cumbersome” method.
Choosing this option posts the full RT message/format in your content bar and allows you to edit it before posting. No cutting/pasting required.
Hope this helps.
Sam.
As I mentioned on Twitter that is a great piece of information! Thank you for sharing it! 🙂
I concur that tweetdeck makes customizing the RT pretty easy and I find those added words to REALLY be helpful and to really be what drives people to want to read the post – plain RT don’t grab my attention as well.
Daria
Margie,
I think there is a careful balance that has to be struck here. I do both. Sometimes I use Twitter’s preferred way of retweeting, typically when I discover a great post or article that I want to share with my followers. BUT, when I find an article that is worth reading and commenting on, I will go the “hard route” and add a question or idea to the conversation.
That said, I am changing up my approach to Twitter. I am backing off some of the more aggressive tactics that I have used in the past. My future goals revolve more around engagement which will require more time spent on “the hard way.”
Happy New Year Margie,
Jason
It definitely is about balancing. Sometimes just clicking Retweet is nice if you want to preserve the exact way someone tweeted. However, I really like to intro and recommend a post with my own words to show that person that I really took in what they were saying. But there’s no hard and fast rule as long as you’re engaging and interacting, which I think you do a fine job of, by the way 🙂
Thanks for your comment, as usual!
Margie- lots of good stuff in this post!
I agree with @OneJillion that I’m not as concerned with tweet metrics when RTing as about giving out great content and tweet love. I view retweeting with two purposes: 1. to offer value to my stream of twitter followers and 2. to show appreciation to the original twitterer who offered the tweet. Both parts are equally important .
I also think that RTs can be used as building blocks to a relationship if done well. I will often add a comment about the value of the tweet. If there is someone you admire and want to begin a relationship with, RTing their content is a nice first step and a signal to that person that you are a fan of their tweets. It’s not a difficult conceptual jump to open up a conversation from a RT. Of course, an @tweet to someone just as easily opens the conversation, but the RT is the compliment.
On the RTs of compliments, I’m in your court. I think the thank you + @ is a great way to return the compliment, which lets your twitter followers know you appreciate the other person as well.
Hi Debra,
Absolutely. I am certainly not against RTing, and I agree that they can really move many relationships forward at one time, in fact. However, if you rely solely on retweets for engagement, I think you are missing out on a lot, and that is what concerns me with those kinds of accounts.
Thanks so much for adding to the conversation!