How to Retweet the Right Way in 4 Easy Steps
Just saw a great tweet? Love what you just read and want to share it with others by repeating (retweeting, aka RT) the tweet? Cool! You're getting the hang of Twitter. Now do me a favor, and DON'T TOUCH THAT RT ICON!
I know, I know. That link in the bottom of every tweet is darned convenient. It's fast. It's simple. But you're really missing out if you use it exclusively.The most obvious disadvantage? You can't add anything to the tweet -- your opinion, why you felt it retweet-worthy, what you'd like to point out or add -- at all. Being able to add to the initial tweet is a really important aspect of retweets that Twitter missed when they built the RT function.
It also misses the important relationship-building role that RTs play. With automatic RTs, the person you're retweeting won't know it unless they habitually check their "Your Tweets, retweeted" tab. (Yes, you have one.) They'll likely never know you shared their post. Old school "manual" RTs on the other hand, are a nice little compliment (and who couldn't use a nice compliment?).
Luckily, there's a better way. Go old school with the manual RT! Here's how...
PRO TIP: You can even use this method when you would otherwise send @replies, to excerpt part of the tweet you're responding to and give more of your readers a sense of the previous conversation.
How to Manually Retweet in 4 Easy Steps
- Copy the entire tweet, including the Twitter username of the person who sent it, and paste it into the text box wherever you normally tweet.
- Delete the user's name and any unessential characters that came over when you copied and pasted. Type "RT @" (R-T-space-@) at the very front of the tweet.
- Edit the tweet down to fit 140 characters and/or allow comment space. Kill optional punctuation, change "and"s to "&," abbreviate, omit words with mini ellipses ".." and if you absolutely must, change "the" to "th" and "to" to "2" (although that looks dumb, so try to avoid it).
- Add your two cents. I like to use the space before RT to add stuff like
"thank you," "you're welcome," "+1," or a remark about what I liked, my opinion, etc.
Word to the wise -- there's a big fat line between building relationships, being polite, and extending gratitude on the one hand, and brown-nosing/currying favor on the other. Please don't go out there and RT content merely to kiss up to someone. Do NOT make it a habit to retweet everything someone says until they relent and follow you back. Nobody likes "that guy."
But if you truly LOVE a piece of content and want to RT it anyway, why not bundle in a nice little compliment to the person who originally posted it?
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4 Tips for Terrific Twitter Offers
A new article has been posted on our blog by Andrew Pitre:4 Tips for Terrific Twitter Offers
If you're not already thinking of social media as a channel for lead generation, then you need to start... today. Twitter, in particular, is a great place to promote special offers that turn followers into warm leads.Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a relatively new addition to the HubSpot team, Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton, about best practices for creating compelling offers on Twitter.
What Makes a Great Offer on Twitter?
1. The offer has to be nice. By "nice," we mean something of actual value. This sounds obvious, but this can be a tricky thing to master because you need to understand what you're audience actually wants. Here are some general tips: People like things that are free, that are educational, that help them make purchasing decisions, and that make their lives easier. For example, if you sell swimming pools, a "First Time Pool Buyer's Guide," would probably be appealing to your target audience.2. The offer has to be novel. A great Twitter offer needs to be something that you can't get anywhere else. It needs to be exclusive. For example, if you are a Yoga Studio and you tweet "come take a Yoga class," you're not offering anything or adding real value. Likewise, if you're currently offering a 20% discount on your homepage, then offering the same discount in a tweet isn't something new. On the other hand, if you say something like, "The next 10 people who retweet this will receive a free Yoga class," you're heading in the right direction.
3. The offer has to be time sensitive. The idea of "creating urgency" is necessary for any offer, but it's especially important on Twitter, since Twitter is such a fast-paced medium. If you want to get people clicking, you need to give them a reason to click now. On Twitter, where content in Twitter streams flies by fast, if followers don't click now, they probably never will.
4. Bonus Tip: Make the offer naughty. People like knowing that they're getting something they're not supposed to. If you can, make your offer a little surreptitious. For example, you might say something like, "Here's a trick to get an extended trial of Spotify," or "I just found a secret registration discount code for SXSW." Often times, these types of offers are best if they come from partners or individual Twitter accounts from employees within your organization.
