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Before we actually start talking about the power of RT I just want to give you the Coles
Notes version of Twitter.
Twitter is micro blogging, 140 characters at a time. Sending text messages to all the
people who have agreed to receive your information. This information, the 140 characters is known
as a "tweet". The Twitter program enables you to quickly and easily send and receive
these short messages.
Twitter enables users to share the favorite links, tweets, and golden nuggets they find
from other people using the service. You can share the interesting tweets from the people
you are following. When you "RT" the tweets of others you are complimenting them, demonstrating
your admiration or even approval of what they have said or are doing. I for example RT my
new students of Butterfly Networking consistently, it encourages them to keep going and can sometimes
provide that little lift that they need at just the right time.
There are a number of ways that you can RT, some are time consuming and others can cost
you money. Twitter has provided us with a button on the right hand side of the tweets
in your twitter stream, it only show up when you hover over it with your mouse. You can
click on the "Re-Tweet" button, the system will then ask you to "Re-Tweet to your followers?"
You simply need to click on the yes button and allow the system to do the work. To give
credit to the original person, "RT" plus the originator's user name is inserted at the
beginning of the tweet. Here's an example:
FloetryCatnap Think so big that it actually scares you into success. | RT @RetireWithCarla
There are a number of re-tweeting programs out there today, 100's of programs are being
written just for Twitter. With my favorite one, Hootsuite, you can re-tweet as simple
as two clicks: one to create the re-tweet, and one to post it to Twitter.
So what gets re-tweeted? or what do you want to re-tweet?
1) Calls to action (as in: "please Re-Tweet"), while they might sound tacky actually work
very well to get Re-Tweets.
2) Timely content gets Re-Tweeted a lot, search out the current trending topics and post about
them
3) Freebies are good, if it is quality information people gladly RT it.
4) Self-reference (Tweeting about Twitter) works.
5) People like to Re-Tweet blog posts. A blog post is a story and Pele like to share stories
with their followers