Retweeting is a refined art.
Crafting that masterpiece of shared knowledge and attribution in just 140 characters is not always easy. Being a good retweetist takes practice and some discipline. Seeing as I have already mastered the art of the retweet, I thought I would teach you how to turn a child’s painting into a Picasso.
To get us started let’s look at a typical retweet:
It’s a real mess. A hodge podge of attribution, personal commentary and extra meta. It’s kinda like when you’re at a party or family get together and the most annoying person in the room walks up to you and says “So Bobby told me that Jennifer told her cousin that Tommy told her about something important, by the way I have a rash”. It’s like a horrible game of telephone with the interesting message diluted by all types of useless back story.
Now lets look at a proper retweet:
Ahh look at that, a thing of beauty really. I sorta want to print that out and hang it on my wall. Notice we haven’t really done much but strip out the extra junk and smooth out some of the formating.
For shits and giggles let’s break down each element of a proper retweet.
The Breakdown
Headline: In most cases the original headline of the article will do. Writers (bloggers too!) tend write a good headline already so don’t be afraid to use them. However there is sometimes room for improvement. If you want a high CTR (click-through-rate) make sure the headline conveys a message, asks a question or moves some type of emotion.
Short URL: Of course when you retweet you’re also sometimes inheriting a short URL from someone else. This might require you to re-create the short URL with something a little prettier. My personal favorite is Bit.ly which seems to be the most trouble free and useful. I would avoid any shortners that include a frame or lame top hat.
Source: I’m not sure who established the rules of thanking sources 3 levels down the line but it’s not necessary. At the most you should include one source, preferably with the Twitter name of the contents original creator. This gives the user an idea of what to expect from the link. Citing @mashable tells them it will most likely be a Twitter story, citing @joeblow tells the reader nothing. It may be a little snobby to not thank someone for introducing you to a story, but this is art we’re talking about here, not good housekeeping.
The Variables
To RT or not to RT: Do you preface each retweet with the text RT? My personal preference is to drop the RT and start of with the headline. Some programs will auto-insert the RT for you, and users sometimes find it helpful to know right away the tweet is a rebroadcast. If you drop the RT, you should cite your source at the end with a (via @name).
Hashtags: Including hashtags in your tweets and retweets is fine, within reason. The biggest value of the hashtag is to help people search and find related content. So let’s say you’re at an event or the retweet is about a trending topic, hashtag away. Trying to be funny by including ironic hashtags and you’ve changed the masterpiece into a velvet black light poster.
Now that you know the proper format, go ahead and retweet this. With feeling this time.
