BellaOnline Forums Computers Blogs & Social Networking Retweets - Do You Retweet?

I've been reading lots of Twitter studies recently Two different studies have found that under 2% of tweets are retweets. The vast majority of tweets on Twitter are actual first person information from that person.

I never even thought about retweets. In fact I would always stuff my tweet up to the character count maximum - meaning someone could NOT retweet me without chopping off part of my post. So I was actively creating posts that couldn't be retweeted I didn't quite mean to.

I never expect people to retweet my works. I only expect my followers to read my news, since I'm sort of putting out press releases about the things I'm working on.

I also never retweet other peoples' words, because that's not what my feeds are for. They're to talk about what I'm doing, sort of like how a press release for WineIntro.com would talk about a change on WineIntro.com, not on another different wine site.

What do you guys do? Do you retweet constantly - are you in that 2%? Or do you talk about your own activities?

I try to retweet, even though I don't have loads of time for twitter. I think it's an essential part of using twitter. You may get followers/follow others through other ways, but the RT is a great way to spread, virally, ideas and introduce peope.

When someone I like retweets someone, I consider it an opportunity to find a new friend if I like what they retweet. Or, an opportunity to follow someone new & interesting.

It's a great endorsement, if you will, and of course, it's flattering. I love being retweeted!

And, I appreciate when someone retweets an article posting, for instance--bringing me potential new readers. I try to do that for others, too. But, if they just retweet my "ramblings", that's fun, too, and I often do the same if someone posts something cute or witty or newsworthy.

I don't actually post to be retweetable, but I try to take some time to RT others on occasion. I think social marketing is as important as any marketing, and as such, such have objectives & action plans, so I advise my clients to RT, too.

I also recommend the same interactions on Facebook, but that comes down to "liking" or commenting, and is very important, I think, if you have a fan page.

If you want to be a part of the "conversation" as they say, you are expected to RT (retweet). For our RunPee tweets, we always making them short enough to RT. People REALLY appreciate RTs, as an RT is a recommendation from another person, and not just "me marketing my own stuff."

That two percent of retweeters are a large part of the conversation. Not everyone writes and hopes people will read their work...so for those folks, RTing isn't in their mindset. But active twitter users/social marketers *will* be RTing.

For bloggers who follow other bloggers, for example, no one is going to RT you consistently if you don't RT them sometimes too. And it's always a thrill to look at your @'s (your "ats") and see who has retweeted a post of yours. I like to see what my friends are up to, and i f i like what they did, i try to RT them. I usually get a thank you, which is nice. Not expected, but nice that they appreciated it. :-)

Sometimes people who don't know you will retweet something and that is a wonderful feeling. You always hope something will resonate with others. I know dan and I work on making funny tweets for runpee with hashtags like #firstdraftmovielines - in the hopes they will be retweeted and spread the conversation about RunPee.

If I want to RT someone and their tweet fills up all the characters, sometimes I decide it's not worth my time to RT. If it's a really good post, then I will work on shortening it using 'texting' language.

REALLY smart marketers leave lots of extra room for personal commendations. So, as an example, Moe from Large and Lovely tweeted about a ManBag she found and recommends on her site. It was short enough that I could put my own commendation in the tweet, adding "awesome gender neutral leather bag" before the RT part. If this doesn't make sense here, let me know and i will dig up the exact example. :-)

My point is that i liked the bag and I like Moe and I was hoping my RT (with my commendation) would help her out. Maybe someone would buy the bag from her site because I did that. You never know. I have a whole set of friends that might see that tweet who do not follow her.

Someone who follows me helped me out with a RT about congratulating RunPee for making the Today Show. She has a lot of followers who might not have heard of RunPee, so it helps me spread the word. Plus, having RunPee listed in any tweet makes that tweet - and every tweet with RunPee in it - show up on a search term in the timeline for RunPee. I keep tabs on that all day long. :-)

I really need to sit down and turn this info into a Retweeting article.

But in any case, Twitter is considered a 'conversation' and not an RSS feed as such, which is a one-way direction. Not that people can't use it that way, of course! People can use twitter however it suits them and have time for. :-)

I RT tweets that have 'that certain something' on my freelance writing site - tricky to say what that is, but maybe tweets that are topical,beautiful, funny or just illustrate the everyday human condition. I have twitter posted on my home page.

That's so interesting, so some people deliberately write short Tweets? I always do maximum long Tweets When you look at the graph curve of average # of characters per post, it looks like a log chart. Meaning it's really low down at the 10-11-12 character end and then spikes SUPER high at the maximum-characters-possible end. So lots of people are apparently of the stuff-it-full mentality

I'll try to make shorter posts, it's hard enough for me to make them Twitter-short!

I used the full character space at first. And once I started RTing I realized how hard that made it for people to show they liked your stuff; few people have the time to shorten things for you, since RT and a space, plus the @whatever adds a bunch of characters.

So for things I hope someone might enjoy and pass on, I take a look at leaving at least 5-10 chars open, without getting all too text-ey sounding. No1 liks 2much txt tlk. ;-)

I try to RT whenever possible. It can be hard, though. I tweet about names -- baby names mostly -- but not many of the people I follow tweet about this. So I sometimes have to deviate from my topic to get a good RT in.

I also do my best to limit the size of my own tweets, in case someone wants to RT me. I aim to use as little space as possible, so that people can add whatever comment they want without having to edit my original tweet.

Twitter should really make a Retweet box that's dedicated for us as a comment box - today I RTd a lovely photo of Dublin,an interesting political opinion piece and a poem tweet!

I would love it if Twitter introduced a simple "retweet" button -- perhaps right below the "favorite" star and "reply" arrow.

That would be nice. Tweetdeck has a button for it (scroll over the avatars to find them), but it would be a time saver if the Twitter site had that too.

I just cut and paste and add RT and the @ in front...but a button would be even better. I wonder why they don't?