The RT (or, if you’re not on Twitter, retweet) function started with good intentions. It was a way of spreading a compelling thought, idea or a concept that struck a chord with you to your followers. But over time, it’s lost its impact. Quite frankly, it’s overused. In the past couple of hours, 35 out of the 100 updates in the #eventprofs group alone were retweets. That’s more than 1 in 3 tweets.
The act of retweeting can be very powerful when done effectively:
- When you RT an update that also has a hashtag extension, it duplicates a message to the same community. If the intent is to share the tweet with your followers, consider removing the hashtag.
- Read the tweet before you RT it. Ensure you really value what’s being said.
- There are a number of reasons why people choose to follow others on Twitter. Probably the most common is to get ideas, insights and perspectives on a particular topic from an authority. Everything you tweet is a reflection on you. Before you RT consider whether it’s relevant to your voice and valuable to your followers.
- I always appreciate when someone adds their thoughts to a retweet to tell me why they’re retweeting something. It can be as simple as telling me that a link is interesting or informative:
Think before you retweet…but feel free to RT this post.
Great points, very helpful to me. A couple of thoughts about retweeting to the same hashtag group: If Twitter is a conversation, then RT can be like a head nod. It often feels interactive rather than repetitive to me. But as you said, most helpful when a RT adds comments.
[on READY2SPARK] Think before you RT…but feel free to RT this – http://www.ready2spark.com/2010/10/think… #eventprofs
Great post, Lara and a good reminder to all. I have noticed this in the past on many hashtags and tend to do it myself as well. Thanks for the reminder!
Yay! I retweeted right 🙂 Thanks for the reminder Lara!
Good point Lara. As I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of the retweet because you accomplish 2 things, you promote good content and you promote the people who found it. However, I do think care should be taken. If you are going to retweet something right away, I agree it’s probably best to lose the hashtags. I also think that those of us lucky enough to stumble onto a wonderful community like #eventprofs, need to take a critical look at our contributions to the Twitter stream and make sure we are adding quality content and not pollluting it w/redundancy or self-promotion.
@Jenise @Carolyn @Liz – Thanks so much for weighing in and I always look forward to your tweets!
@Barbara – Thanks for adding that thought – You’re absolutely right, a RT can be a sign of appreciation for a good post.