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.
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 and business owners 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 content
Always make sure to announce your latest content in a tweet, as that will make it easy for someone to “retweet” your message to their own network.
Make it easy for your readers to share
Remind your readers about Twitter on your site and make it easy for them to share your content on Twitter. You can use retweet plugin like TwitThis for this or you can create a simple link yourself. Use the following HTML link on your sitet:
http://twitter.com/home?status=
Put your tweet text after the equals sign. Remember to replace each space with “%20″.
When a reader clicks on 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.
Start a Twitter competition
Two top-bloggers Shoemoney and John Chow have recently started Twitter competitions, where in order 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 the more followers you have, the more exposure your tweets will get and there will be a higher chance 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.
Go viral with Twitter ReTweets
