Retweeting the right way

The art of retweeting a tweet seems simple enough. On most applications you can simply press the ‘retweet button’ and you’re away…or at least you think you’re away…. However it seems that hundreds of competent tweeters get this simple action very wrong.

In the midst of tweeting excitement, many people tend to forget that they need to tailor the tweet in order to include the entire tweet content plus your ‘RT @handle’.

If you fail to amend your tweet by condensing a few letters or emitting a word or two - you are in great danger of going over your 140 characters and therefore missing out your vital ingredient - your hyperlink.

If you are using Twitter on your android or iphone – it’s less easy to commit this crime. The Twitter app on smartphone really dumbs things down for us and we are given the option to simply retweet the tweet as it is – ‘no RT @handle’ needed. Twitter.com actually allows for us to do this as well.

However if you are a Hootsuite user, for example, things aren’t so simple. You just need to remember to amend the tweet and allow enough character space to write ‘RT @handle’ and then include all the tweet content. It’s also worth noting that most tweets will need some editing as the majority of tweets take up the required character space.

When you hit that retweet button in Hootsuite – it very kindly takes the tweet for you and adds the ‘RT @handle’ in front of your tweet  -  however, that doesn’t mean to say that the whole message will now fit into 140 characters. If you just then hit send – you’ve most probably chopped off the end of your tweet and therefore your link, which is a waste of time for everyone involved!

We hope this small complaint on our part will help to stop people getting over excited with their retweeting and delivering half messages. Please help to spread the word by sharing on this blog  - in the hope to eradicate retweeting errors.

Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Carvill Creative covers all aspects of online visibility – website effectiveness, social media marketing, social media management and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Passionate about Online Visibility - creating an integrated approach across websites, blogs and social media platforms.