We love Twitter. But sometimes we all need to take a step back and talk about the basics in a non-threatening, out-of-the-bubble way.
Remember: for every football fan who wants to talk about Cover-2, there’s another who likes the Cowboys for their pretty helmets. The NFL welcomes all with open arms.
Same goes for Twitter — some people are addicted to it, some people don’t get it, and some people are somewhere in-between.
If you are not an addict, first, watch this video from Belgian supergroup K’s Choice. Then, enjoy our mini-guide to “Retweeting.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cklb7L0OA1c
Retweeting: What You Need to Know.
If you spend any time on Twitter, you’ve seen the letters “RT.” And you may have asked yourself, “Self, who is this RT person?”
It’s not a person, but that’s okay. It’s an abbreviation for “Retweet” – re-sending someone else’s tweet (message on Twitter) and paying them homage, or respect, for saying something or sharing something cool.
In an ideal world — where everyone uses Twitter to maximum benefit, lawyers hold hands with dancing puppies while singing “Kumbaya,” stuff like that — an RT would look like this:
Step one: someone tweets something interesting:
Next, the original was thought to be “RT-worthy,” and so it was Retweeted. Like so:
So what if there’s a possibility that these two are either related, married, or part of The White Stripes? Vincent liked what Marie said, it’s a cool quote, and he Retweeted it. Good on ya, mate!
But wait, what’s all this about a Twitter “Retweet Button?”
Good question! If you use the Twitter Retweet button, the RT will look different — and some people may not even see it. For instance, here’s a RT using the Twitter button that was visible by Area 224 ONLY when logging in at Twitter.com:
This is NOT ideal. Give Twitter some time to work out the kinks of this new “system,” but don’t forget the magic letters RT. Which some “clients” – like TweetDeck – automatically put into your Tweets when you RT, and into your Twitter stream when others do.
This is what an RT looks like when sent on TweetDeck:
More homage: comment BEFORE the original tweet.
Let’s say you want to add a comment. Where do you do it? BEFORE. Using TweetDeck it’s easy:
Final bit of advice: try to keep the text intact as best you can. In order to facilitate this happening, your original tweet should be NO MORE THAN 120 characters.
And, if you are the one doing the Retweeting, try to use as much of the original quote when retweeting.
For instance, here’s an outbound tweet from Area 224:
The RT in response looked like this:
What could have made this back-and-forth better? Well, it was probably NOT RT worthy – in that it was more of a response to my original post. And it was not clear what “them” Area 224 was referring to, since the original tweet was changed.
What’s Next?
Well, if you’re learning all of this Twitter stuff, that’s okay. Thanks to some of the changes, we’re all re-learning some new things — like where we should be RTing from.
Love to get your thoughts on the best and worst RT habits. Keep on Tweeting!
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