Retweet or RT is when someone takes your Twitter message and tweets that same message to all followers in their own Twitter network. Getting readers to retweet your content allows the power of your network to take over and spread your message in the Twittersphere. In other words: viral marketing.
This article will focus on how to encourage your readers to retweet your content.
Word of mouth or viral marketing is when your content is spread from person to person. Retweeting is the most powerful factor in something going viral on Twitter. It helps spread your message from one community to the next and has the ability to spread messages much faster than any other viral marketing tool.
It is free advertising and bloggers should do anything they can to encourage readers to retweet their content. Following steps can be taken to get more readers to tweet your content.
Announce your latest blog post
- Always make sure to announce your latest blog posts in a tweet, as that will make it easy for someone just to click on “retweet” button and retweet your post to their own network. This was my tweet about my most recent blog post:
Top 5 Twitter plugins to incorporate into your blog – Latest post – http://twurl.nl/pa3jl5
Make it easy for your readers to share
- Remind your readers about Twitter in your blog posts and make it easy for them to share your blog post on Twitter. You can use one of the Twitter plugins for this or you can create a simple link yourself. Use the following HTML link in your post:
http://twitter.com/home?status=
Put your tweet text after the equals sign. Remember to replace each space with “%20″.
When a reader clicks this link, it will forward him/her to the Twitter home page with the “What are you doing?” text box pre-filled with your message. Click this finished link to tweet the before mentioned tweet.
This can now be done automatically with Tweet This blog plugin or with a manual edit of your WordPress theme.
Start a Twitter competition
- Both Shoemoney and John Chow have just started Twitter competitions, where to enter a chance to win some prizes, you must retweet a message they have chosen. Looking at my own Twitter stream and searching the Twittersphere, it seems to be a very efficient way to spread your message and your link.
Be active on Twitter
- Spend time on Twitter. The more active you are and more followers you have, more exposure your tweets will get and a higher chance there will be that someone will retweet your content.
Build relationships
- You will never go wrong by talking to your target audience, other bloggers, and other power users on Twitter. By building relationships with people interested in your subject, you stand a better chance of getting your messages retweeted.
Write quality content
- When someone retweets your tweet or your content it shows a high degree of content approval. Your tweet and your content was of such great quality and was so valuable to the person, that they decided to share it with their own Twitter network.
You must have useful, original and quality content. It is impossible to attract people to read your articles, if your articles are not useful. The same way, it is hard to get anyone to spread your link and retweet your message, if they do not enjoy and find your content valuable.
How do I track my retweets?
- Simple! Use Twitter Search and search for the URL you have tweeted in your original tweet. This will show you all the retweets that used the same URL. Look at the number of followers for each person that has retweeted your link to get the number of the total exposure.
To get even more informations about your retweets, use service like TweetBurner to shorten the URL’s in your tweet, as it tracks how many clicks your URL gets.
Twitter Marketing E-Book
For much more information on Twitter, check out my “Twitter Marketing E-book: How to go viral on Twitter“. The e-book includes all the tips on how I use Twitter to build my authority, drive traffic to my blog and get customers. Enjoy twittering!
Image by Ray Lopez.
Join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE! Subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog via RSS or via e-mail.
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Great advice, as usual.
I like using Bit.ly for my shortening services because it keeps track of all sites you shorten, and then can go back and analyze the information for that link. It’s quite handy, and it’s even shorter than some others like tinyurl.
@Chris – I’ll have to take a look at Bit.ly to see their tracking. TweetBurner could use some more options with analytics.
@Max – Good point!
@Gera – Oh I did not realize that some mobile phone and clients do not show the whole tweet. Will have to look into that.
@David Hobson – Wow impressive! I would have to take a look at that.
@Geoserv – Thanks and good luck on Twitter!
making the twitter post easy to retweet is good, keeping it short and not taking all the characters up allows people to add “retweet” to the message.
Hi Marko!
An important point to remark is when you make a retweet try to change the order if possible to put the tiny url nearer at the beginning….the reason many people see the first characters in their mobile phones or other applications show the first ones… In that way you can increase the chance to someone to read it.
Other point is the difference of hours with your followers as well the quantity of them. This fact can determine the success of a retweet.
Great article …keep going and I’m retweeting it
A great new plugin for tweeting is Tweetsuite. It enables your members to tweet your posts. I received over 1500 hits from twitter to one blog post thanks to the plugin.
STUMBLED!
I haven’t used Twitter much yet, I will need to now that I have read this great post.
Thanks.
You have a great point. I had a new blog post yesterday and just tweeted it normally and it was without my encouragement retweeted in a balls to the walls fashion and went viral on Twitter yesterday. There is truly power in the retweet.
well twitter is my favorite tool. This is really very good.
Hey, I really useful post there. I don’t spend enough time as I should to on Tweeter, but will be doing so from now on.
Derek
Great information esp for those of us learning to use twitter. Used your RT button – seemed cumbersome though, somehow it still seems easier to copy and past your url to a tweet box. I do that oftern. But maybe that is just me. Then again if someone isn’t into that habit you haven’t lost the opp of having them retweeting so I get the point.
Great ideas for the use of the Twitter links. I have tried a couple of the Twitter Plugins for Wordpress and like the ideas, but found a few somewhat lacking. Using the simple link you provided and combining it with the permalink tag in wordpress could be a simple solution. And I see you included @yourname as the starter – I gotsta add that method to my links. Thank you!
Nice post,
i wanna ask a question though,
how to put the retweet button???
i searched a lot didnt find anything like that ?
the only way i know someone can retweet is by doing it manually …
it wud really help a lot if there is a shortcut to this.
@zeeshan – On Twitter.com you can only copy/paste retweets. If you use Twitter client like Tweetdeck.com you have a “RT” button showing alongside any tweet so it is much easier.
To make it easy for your visitors to retweet your stuff, either use a link like I did, or use a plugin like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet-this/ .
I’m so amazed with what Twitter is capable of doing! The user clicked RT link is pretty smart to do. I’ve also seen more contests going on with Twitter. This year is going to be a year of innovative uses with Twitter.
Kick-ass Thesis Mod you have here! Very nice.
I also love the fact that your form incluses a Twitter ID field. You are the first to do this I believe.
Regards
Shane
Good Stuff!
Hi great info
Off to that other post you have
Stumbled and Twit that
Thanks
Great Post, I myself is having a twitter contest for a Free Apple Touch give away I had a contest last month for RSS subscriber and it went great, hopefully this goes as great as the last contest held =)
Very nice post. First time visiting your blog and I know it won’t be the last time. Keep it up boss.
Hi Marko
I stayed up to the early hours on Monday working out how to replicate your automatic reTweet link at the end of a post. Fo what it is worth, I thought I would give you some feedback.
1 I tried it on two posts, one that was a week old but very popular (about Twitter – surprise, surprise!) and the other was a new post. I managed it despite NO programming experience and a simple Wordpress.com platform. I was so proud of myself!
2) Within 24 hours, both posts had been reTweeted by people I do not know. Both had followers in the 200s. So my traffic shot up yesterday. I used Twitter Search to track any reTweeting.
So, a really great idea from you. Only one small tip from me
3) Make sure you add a space (%20) between the acronym RT and your Twitter name if you are following @yourTwittername. With no space, you also have to search Twittername. Probably obvious to others!
So, a big thank you!
@John Welsh – Very nice story, congratulations and thanks for the update! It just shows that it is possible and reaffirms my thinking that every blog/site should have “tweet this” instead of “email this” in their articles.
@John Welsh
Congratulations on the implementation! Looks like it really paid off
Great post, it has sound advice, i am already doing quite a bit of your suggestions, bt you have presented it out in a nice piratical way.
Good Stuff! I have found great response to asking for a RT. However, choose to only do it on occation, and only on the good stuff!
Hi Marko, just found your blog thanks to a tweet
I love the look of it and will be using your tips. On an aside, how long have you been blogging? Site’s Alexa ranking is VERY impressive! My blog/site is about a month old and I’m always interested in knowing how long it took other to get great traffic, as well as methods used .. care to share? Thanks! Tia
@Tia Singh – Thanks for the nice words! I already did answer / share all the details you’re interested in. Check out this post: How I got my blog from Google PR0 to PR4 in two months.
i got your link from dusyedwards on twitter & will RT
a lot of solid info here & written well.
ty
m
I like this post and all the five plugins or methods these really helps to get more and more twitter followers : thanks to the author.
Great advice. What I’ve found is that it’s more important to simply get involved – retweet other’s tweets, respond to others’ questions and comments. Once you build a rapport with people, they will be happy to throw some PR your way. An ineffective promotion method is to simply send out a tweet every time you have a new blog post. Connect and engage with your followers, and they’ll do the same in return.
Great posst!
Thanks for the link Marko! Soaking up all the info
Happy Easter! x
mm.. thank you
hay than you for this tutorial .
Tell me how I can add the twitter box to my posts so that the users i.e. visitors can directly twitt this posts on my blog if they like ?
@Ashish Kalmegh – See how to add tweet this to your posts.
I have my blog on blogger . So how can I do this there ?
@Ashish Kalmegh – I don’t know how to do it on Blogger. Switch to Wordpress to get all the customization and plugin opportunities.
Thanks for the tips. I'll be a twitter wizz in no time.
Wow what a great blog. Glad I've found this link. I will definitely use the Twitter's plug-in to go viral. Awesome man. Thanks.