Tweet-a-tweet

A retweet happens when someone tweets your tweet and adds the letters “RT” and a “@yourusername” reference to your original message, indicating that they’re retweeting your message to their followers, as opposed to plain ripping off your stuff. A retweet creates a ripple effect for your message; it’s an excellent way of perpetuating your tweets across multiple people networks.

Like a forwarded email, retweets work like viral pass-alongs except that they’re usually non-spammy (and thus more genuine). A person’s tweets are publicly visible to all his/her followers, so there’s very little room for spam – nobody likes following a spam monger on Twitter. Personally, I like to think of a retweet as the Twittersphere’s way of rewarding people for their contributions. Good Twitter karma, if you may.

Retweets indicate a few things:

1. People are reading what you tweet.
2. The stuff you’re writing isn’t crap (it’s good enough to be shared)
3. People will be checking out your profile (your number of followers might grow as a result of this)
4. People trust you enough to recommend your stuff to their friends (it’s not just your credibility at stake, it’s theirs too)
5. If the RT links to your blog or website, expect a healthy increase in web traffic (you’ll get some good mileage for your tweet)

Side note: If you’re familiar with the concept of linkbaiting, you’ll greatly appreciate the potential of retweets. Twitter users who regularly include links to their own blogs usually enjoy good referrer traffic from their networks. While it’s bad twetiquette to saturate your tweets with self-promotion links, I’d recommend spending a good deal of Twitter time (15-20%) focused on generating exposure for your blog or website contents, especially if you’ve got good stuff to share.

So, think you’ve got what it takes to get RT-ed? Here are some useful tools to get started:

1. Dan Zarella’s list, Retweetist – The top retweeters in the business.
2. Retwit’d – Recently retweeted topics.
3. TweetSuite – WordPress plugin to integrate Twitter with your blog.

More info about retweets:

1. David Armano – The art of the retweet, tapping into Twitter’s viral nature.
2. Techcrunch – It’s not how many followers you have that counts, it’s how many times you get retweeted.
3. Jeremiah Owyang – How bloggers should inspire retweets.
4. Twitip – How to track Twitter clicks and conversions.

Like this post? Retweet it!