This post is pretty basic stuff. If you know the difference between old style Retweets and new, there may not be much here for you. But I’ve been talking with newer users recently, and they suggested I create this primer. Here you go

Retweets are a vital part of a good Twitter strategy. Everyone wants to have their stuff promoted by others. When people follow me, I go look at their profile to see if I want to follow back. No retweets? I don’t follow, unless their content is so good it has sufficient inherent value on its own. That’s rare with someone who never retweets.

So if you want to be attractive to follow, you need to do it. But how?

There are two styles of retweets, old and new. This is like Coke. New is not necessarily better. Here’s an example of an old style retweet.

And here’s a new style.

See how with the new style you barely recognize it as a retweet. The only way to tell are the tiny green arrows at the upper left corner of the tweet. It can be confusing if you miss the arrows because it looks like you suddenly started following someone you don’t remember following.

The advantages of the old style are as easy:

1. You recognize it as a retweet

2. You can add your comments

3. They will show up in the person’s Mention stream.

There is, in my opinion, only one advantage to the new style. It’s easy. One step and it’s done. It’s also the only way to Retweet from the Twitter main page without going through cut-and-paste hoops.

The lack of comments is the big one. It’s good to signal to your followers why you Retweeted. It also gives feedback to the original poster. Feedback is good.

The not showing up in the Mentions stream is a pet peeve of mine. Twitter makes you jump through lots of hoops to find out who retweeted you using the new style. Gratitude is important. How can I thank someone if I don’t know who they are?

How do you Retweet using the old style? Cut-and-paste hoops on Twitter. Or use a client, like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite that allows you to choose which style you prefer.

Not sure how to set that up? No problem. Give me a call, and I’ll walk you through it. If you are in the DC metro area come to the Womens Business Center on Friday afternoons at 1:00 for the regularly scheduled #tweetmeet, and Dannelle or I will help you out.

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 11:06 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.