Zen and the art of retweeting

Do you like to retweet other people’s content? So, do I. But, what helps your Twitter account grow is not random retweeting. Don’t retweet to woo people into retweeing you. That rarely works. If you want to gain someone’s positive attention, interact with them. Respond to something they wrote. Write something interesting, or funny that really sends an important message that they will enjoy reading.

Don’t just retweet anything.
Choose from hundreds of tweets. Make sure the tweet has good content. Make sure the link to the article functions and that the article is worth recommending to others. Make sure the topic will be popular with your audience. You need to know your audience’s tastes by watching carefully to know this. Being picky about retweeting can gain you a lot of followers. I like to retweet great photos, and sometimes a really good photo will gain me lots of new followers. I tend to repost that same photo a lot since it gives me good luck.

Tweeting other people’s blog entries
I do this all the time. I’ll come up with a different title for their blog entry and tweet it on my network. The result is that they get lots of traffic and I get more followers. It is a win win situation. But, I don’t just pick any blog entry. I’ll read through many entries to find something really good. With videos it is more time consuming, but I’ll watch several videos until I find one worth sharing.

Don’t just write a tweet
I will write many variations of tweets for a single article. I will size them to make sure the text, link and tags all fit. I’ll refine my variations. I’ll pick the best one or two and tweet them, but not in a row. I’m interested to see what tweets are popular, which are not, and then figure out what it was that made the tweet popular. Sometimes small changes in wording can make a tweet get exponentially more retweets!

Good luck in your tweeting.
Observe, pay attention, and enjoy the process. Twitter is fun, but take it seriously. If you put quality out there, you will get quality followers and lots of them!

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One Response to Zen and the art of retweeting

  1. Great reminders Mitch! I especially like the “tweeting someone else’s blog post” idea.

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