Wow!  This week’s chat was full of useful tips on the Twitter retweet (RT).   I want to thank everyone who participated and helped spread the word.  A big thanks to Sysomos’ Community Manager Sheldon Levine @sysomos for co-hosting the chat.

#smmeasure chat #3 recap

Last week, we gave our chatters a variety of “versus” scenarios and many participants enthusiastically provided us with their wisdom.  This week we centered our discussion around the Twitter retweet (RT).  Below is just a small taste of the great conversation we had.  A full transcript is also available.

Q1: What does being RT’d mean to you?

• @karimkanji:  “being Rt’d means that what I’ve tweeted is valuable and/or the person tweeting is seen as valuable.”
• @ellerich:  “I see being RT’d as having shared something valuable or if interest to the ppl I interact w/ on twitter”
• @hust0058:  “I equate a RT to “liking” something on Facebook”
• @PRBristolblog:  “being Re-tweeted means recognition of good content that is being pushed to a wider audience”
• @BrandEngineers:  “RT means you understand & connect w/ your audience. You get their pace and appetite for content. A great feeling”
• @BrandEngineers:  “A RT is acknowledgment. A gateway. The low hanging fruit, but start of, deeper engagement.”
• @jgombita:  “always the cynic, think there’s a lot of reciprocal RT’ing going on, regardless of value. Gaming. Like a 140-c PR Blog Party”
• @jdojc:  “I suppose # of RTs is crude & imperfect indicator tweet quality or at least how relevant ur posts are to ur followers.”

Q2:  What do you do to get yourself RT’d? Do you have any secrets for getting RT’d?

• @swonderlin:  “No secrets behind getting RT’d – just share good content!”
• @hust0058:  “Add links, those get the most RTs in my experience”
  • @hust0058:  “no facebook links… they never work.”
• @ellerich:  “make sure the tweet is short enough that it can be RTd – ideally w/ room for a comment/insight before!”
  • @ellerich:  “I’m mostly likely to RT (when asked) if it’s sthg not self-serving. Never so ppl can sell themselves or their business”
• @JPedde:  “Advice I was given: Dont just say “Please RT” – “If you like it, RT it!” is less of an imposition”

Q3:  Do you measure how many times a message is RT’d or how many people that RT potentially reached, i.e., impressions?

• @brightmatrix:  “It’s one way to determine how much “reach” your messages get. Again, one metric to use among several.”
• @swonderlin:  “Measure both – Just because an “influencer’ RT’d your message, doesn’t mean all their followers saw/clicked on it”
• @smmeasure:  “If you are just counting the # of RTs. What kind of benchmark do you use? Historical? Trending? Other?”
• @brightmatrix:  “Trends are always informative. Historical is good too: what time was original tweet? Was topic in the news?”
• @BrandEngineers:  “Absolute numbers of RTs & RT reach don’t tell the whole story. Time of day is important and often overlooked.”

If you really want to break down RT, 2 recommended tools 1) http://www.tweetreach.com 2) http://www.retweetrank.com

Food for thought:

• From @marketwire:  @guykawasaki says that a RT is “the sincerest form of flattery”.  Does that mean a “like” on FB is the same?

Funny tweet of the chat:

• @LynZee:  “I RT with intentions of stealing that persons soul.”

Check back here every week for #smmeasure announcements and weekly questions.  If you have any questions or specific topics that you would like us to discuss in the future, please tweet @smmeasure or @marketwire.  Keep track of all of the #smmeasure chat recaps.

Join the #smmeasure LinkedIn group and Marketwire Facebook page and let’s continue the conversation again next Thursday, 9:00 am PST, 11:00 am CST, 12:00 pm EST.

Until next time,

Nick

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.