#twooc
Day SIX: ReTweets and Getting ReTweeted Liz Cable
The small print:
All this material, whilst given freely for this course, is for your use only, and not for dissemination to anyone else, even inside your own organisation. Please do recommend that your colleagues sign up for the course so that they can participate too at http:/twooc.wordpress.com
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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DAY 6: Outline Retweets and Getting Retweeted Activity: Search for current conversations using #twooc on your Twitter profile, and get a feel for what’s going on in our “classroom”
E-tivity:
Find some good stuff to retweet.
Retweet a couple of tweets live.
Schedule a couple of tweets for when your followers are online, and aim to be retweeted.
Let us know how far your farthest tweet reached at the end of the day (use tweetreach to track them).
Tools: www.Tweriod.com http://bufferapp.com www.tweetreach.com
Resources: Want more retweets?: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/10-tips-more-twitter-retweets_b8648 The science of retweets: http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-twitter Excellent presentation http://danzarrella.com/the-science-of-retweets-report.html Really good report – you might have to sign up at Danzarella.com to see it.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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Day SIX What’s it all about? Let’s get focused, and let’s review:
The REACH model
reach
engage
amplify
convert
hold
The “REACH” model can be used to measure social media success. It’s a simple measure of: Reach
How many people you are talking to – on Twitter, this can be measured by the number of Followers you have, and the number of times you’ve been Listed
Engage
How many people are talking TO you – on Twitter this is simply measured as @replies (public tweets addressed to you) & Direct Messages (private tweets addressed to you)
Amplify
How many people are talking ABOUT you, this can be measured by the number of times people mention you in Tweets by @username, and if they use your hashtags
Convert
How many people take the call to action you tweet about. Whether that’s to read a blogpost, take part in a survey, or buy your products or services
Hold
How many people stay with you.
Amplification In his book, ‘Facebook Marketing’, Steven Holzner says “The aim is to get trusted referrals . . . from people who authentically evangelise your product or service for you.” Today’s exercises are about AMPLIFICATION:
How many people can we get to pass on our message?
How will we know when they have done so?
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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What is a Retweet? On Twitter, amplification happens when someone likes your message so much they pass it on to their followers, in essence re-tweeting what you have to say. Happily, we on #twooc are all helping each other out in this respect today, and several of you have already had your messages retweeted, but let’s start at the basics. In the early days, users wanted to credit people who tweeted good things, and so they invented retweeting. Literally, you would copy the text of someone else’s tweet into your own status update, and add a credit to the author at the beginning. So if I wanted to retweet something @TrinityVisionUK had said I would type RT: @TrinityVisionUK and then quote their tweet. This caught on very rapidly, and many of the twitter clients (software tools people used to access twitter because the twitter.com interface was so clunky at the time) built the retweet into their engine in this format. Then new Twitter came along, and they built retweets into the Twitter native engine. All you have to do now is click “retweet” and you can retweet a tweet in your timeline – this option appears beneath the tweet when you hover on it:
You can also see that this tweet from @WhitakerJoan has been retweeted once already (well done Joan!). Retweets are how you sometimes find content from people you don’t follow in your timeline. When people retweet you, the retweets are now listed under your Notification tab on your home page under ‘’notifications’ – this makes it easy to spot them and to say “Thanks for the RT” if you think it’s appropriate:
Your own retweets show in your timeline on your homepage, and you can undo a retweet.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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NOTE: ‘Ryan retweeted’ and the retweet sign at the top off the tweet shows that it is a retweet., and you have the option to “Undo Retweet” by clicking “Retweeted” You may also notice the ‘More’ option - shown as three dots, bottom right […]. When you select ‘More’ you have the option to share the tweet via direct message, embed the tweet (to add the tweet to your website).If you want to direct message the tweet to someone a text box below appears allowing you to direct message the tweet. This is a useful feature allowing you to share particular tweets with colleagues perhaps not on Twitter or to share it with someone privately. I use the feature occasionally as a way of bookmarking tweets in order to investigate the content further.
The ACTIVITY menu under the #Discover tab, shows what everyone you are following is up to.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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I love the fact that it assumes if someone I’m following follows someone (as above with @ZUmedia6) it gives me the option to follow them too, right from the same page.
How to ReTweet The way Twitter wants you to do it, is to simply click Retweet, and a box like this will come up:
You’ll notice there’s a problem. There is no way to add your own comment to the message. e.g. RT: @cnni and then quote their tweet. < really useful blogpost So you’ll find lots of people are still doing it the old-fashioned way, with an RT in the text. Like these two tweeps who retweeted a previous course member @Consilient – ignoring Twitter’s desires.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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What this also means, is that a lot of people are using Twitter clients (I use Echofon on my iphone) that give me the option to “retweet” OR to “retweet with comment”. Otherwise people manually add “RT: @username “ (note the space at the end, and it may be with or without the colon) to the front of a tweet when you press retweet. Why am I telling you this?
Because it means if you want to be retweeted your tweets have to be shorter than 140 characters. Your tweets have to be = (140 – 6 – the number of characters in your username) characters long. If your username takes up all 15 available characters, then your retweetable tweets must only be 119 characters long (This is one of the reasons we recommended a short username on Day One). If people click to retweet, and then realise they have to edit it to get it down to the right length, they will either not credit you (and therefore it won’t be a retweet) or they will simply not bother. It’s rare people bother to edit down your tweets.
Retweeting on your mobile device Strangely the mobile app for Twitter actually enables you to ‘retweet’ OR ‘quote’ the tweet. The quote option means that you can edit the tweet before sending it. Some of you may have tried this already:
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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#twooc We will cover mobile Twitter in more detail on Day Eight.
The Modified Tweet There is also an established convention of the MT or Modified Tweet. People put MT before a tweet if they’ve significantly modified what was in the original tweet to show that it’s been adapted but to still acknowledge the original author. This is a useful way of adding your own perspective to a tweet. A general rule of thumb is that if you’ve had to edit the tweet down and have slightly changed the focus of the tweet that it is sensible to put MT rather than RT.
Why is getting retweeted so important? Retweeting is a way of: 1.
Maximising the reach of an individual tweet so that more people click on your links
2.
Having your message (and face and username) put in front of people who don’t know you yet, and who may choose to follow you, thus permanently increasing your audience (and your likelihood of being retweeted)
3.
Retweeting is a sign of trust and a measure of Influence as defined by the growing number of Influence Indexes out there that grade your contribution to the twittersphere (and other channels). E.g. Kred, Klout and Peerindex.net. Your score will get higher, the more you are retweeted and the more you are clicked (i.e. 1 and 2 above).
We’ll cover these reputation indexes later in the course.
http://blog.xplana.com/2010/08/retweet-cartoon/
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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How to get retweeted Say something brilliant Obvious really, but people aren’t going to retweet: “good morning, what’s happening for you this week?” So you need to find something worth repeating to say. Now you may be naturally very witty or erudite, but I find it quite difficult to be off the cuff interesting, which is why my tweets are often about tools I’m playing with, or tips and tricks for social media.
Agree with someone Catch someone delivering a passionate tweet – especially if they have lots of followers – and @reply them agreeing with them, and adding your point of view. They are very likely to retweet you.
Join the in-crowd Find something incredibly popular on another platform and tweet a link to it, with your own comment saying why people should view it. This is good for video, and infographics, etc.
Go beyond words People love media – so let them know a shortened link is a video, a photo, or an infographic (infographics are really retweetable). The convention is to use square brackets [video] – it’s also a warning to people who are tweeting from work that clicking on the link may activate sound of some sort on their device.
Recycle Pinch a link that has already been retweeted a lot, say something new about it, create your own bitly link to the original document, and tweet that. (When I first started, I used to see what was retweeted most in the US overnight first thing in the morning, and be amongst the first to tweet it in the UK). Ask a question If people don’t know the answer, they may well pass it on. Ask for help Actually say, please help – a strong call to action works wonders. Ask to be retweeted Actually say “please RT” (but don’t overdo this as it can look a little desperate, and you’ll have to judge whether it works with your audience) but the powers that be say this works.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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#twooc Use links Be the first to tweet a good article in your field from a really trustworthy source like the BBC, the Guardian, the Economist, etc. @nc_cff had good reach with this on day 3 of #twooc.
Notice the others retweeted it because Nigel hadn’t just retweeted anothers link, he had gone to the original article, and made a new point about it. I bet @DavidHolxmer the author was pleased. Pick up a trend You could pick a trending topic that’s relevant, and use it in a tweet:
Tweet at the right time Use tools like Buffer to schedule Tweets for when your followers are online, or better still, use Tweriod to find out when your most influential followers are online, and arrange your Twitter “live” time accordingly.
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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#twooc Use one or more of the most retweetable words Dan Zarrella, already mentioned, has come up with this table of the most retweetable words.
So adding “Please will you retweet my new blog post” should work . . . .
NEWS FLASH!! Dan is currently offering a 22 page guide to getting retweeted if you sign-up to his newsletter. Go to www.danzarrella.com Focus your keywords for re:tweetabity Dan has also invented an online tool that allows you to find the most retweeted words in your specialism. Why not try it, and compare it to the keyword list you are already using? http://danzarrella.com/the-most-retweetable-words-finder-tool.html And finally Oh, and DanZarrella himself joinedin #twooc (when it was called #12DoT) last time. Him and his 43,000 followers #wellchuffed
@lizcable @TrinityVisionUK
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