Welcome to Day 6 of 30 Days of Networking. When you send out a message on Twitter those that follow you are the only ones that see the message. Wouldn’t it be great if your message could be spread to more people (to people that don’t yet follow you)? Today we look at the art of the Retweet and how it relates to networking. What is a ReTweet? Retweeting is when a message someone has posted is rebroadcast by others to their followers. For example: If I follow you. You post a resource or a message that I think my followers will get value from. I can ‘forward’ that message on by re-tweeting your message:
e.g You post:
Here’s a link to a great article about how to grow your business [link].
I post:
RT @yourusername Here’s a link to a great article about how to grow your business. [link]
The RT above is shorthand for ReTweet. I could also write “Retweet”. Now, my followers will see YOUR post and YOUR user name and may choose to now also follow you. Here is one example:
In this example I have retweeted two posts:
1. The first was by @DynamicBusiness (and mentioned me)
2. The second was a tweet by ABN member @KateTribe Here is another (This time the ‘retweet’ action takes the form of a credit to the original post – without using the words Retweet in the post.)
Make your retweet personal I can take the art of Retweeting one step further. Rather than just forwarding (retweeting) a tweet, I can also add a comment to it. e.g. RT @yourusername Here’s a link to a great article about how to grow your business [Loved this article! Especially Tip No. 2.] Now my followers have a recommendation/reason behind my Rtweet. Why Retweet? Retweeting is for the benefit of your followers. It’s a way to have them share the information and resources that you think will be valuable to them. Another reason to retweet is that it acknowledges the original Tweeter. (They see the tweet too because their @username appears in the retweet.) They may in turn think better of you or retweet you, some time in the future. Never retweet, however, if the tweet isn’t going to add value to your followers. Don’t do it just to win points with the original Tweeter in the hope that they’ll return the favour. When to retweet Retweet any time, but only when the information will truly benefit your audience. That doesn’t mean that it has to be a serious business tweet. For example, last week I tweeted about a really cool video I saw. (The tweet is above.) I made it relevant to my followers by pointing out why I was sending it to them. What to retweet
- Interesting, relevant content.
- Posts that reveal your likes, interests and humour. (Best not to retweet anything too political!).
How retweeting benefits your personal brand and helps you network While Retweeting may send your followers off to ‘hang out’ with others on Twitter momentarily, you remain the source of great information and they’ll come back to you and trust your future tweets if you give them some great resources. Retweeting is a great way to broadcast good content, even if it’s not your own! Others good tweets supplement your own and (as long as they are interesting and relevant to your followers) keep your name ‘out there’ in the Twitterverse. TIP: Always credit the original person by including their user name in the retweet. If you’re getting tight on characters you can abbreviate the tweet but maintain the essence of the message. TODAY’S TASK: Retweet someone! Let us know what happened! Best wishes, Suzi P.S. If you’re using a Twitter application like Tweetdeck of Seesmic Desktop (or on your phone Tweetie or a similar application) look for a button that makes it easy to retweet – one that doesn’t require you to manually type RT or Retweet. If you’re working within the Twitter.com site then just cut/paste the tweet adding RT or Retweet to the front of the tweet.
