The Power of the Re-Tweet

If you have a personal or business Twitter account, you will no doubt have seen many ‘RTs’ that run through you news feed. These are Re-Tweets, which in short means someone has read a Tweet that the feel has value to be shared and therefore will Re-Tweet the original Tweet in order to spread the message.

Many businesses see Twitter as a one dimensional social networking tool, but Twitter has many layers that need to be understood to receive a maximum return on investment.

The effectiveness of a RT is extremely powerful and can address a wider audience and of course, drive traffic to a site if a link is included.

So to understand the effectiveness of a RT, you must firstly understand how far a Tweet can go. It’s a very simple concept. If, for example, I, Amy Brown of Freer PR tweet to all my contacts, I have on average 200 followers. Then Freer PR’s Director Nicki Spindler Re-Tweets my comment on her business Twitter account @Freer_PR which on average has 1000 followers, and then on to her personal account which again has on average 100+ followers. My short Tweet has the possibility of being read by an audience of 1,300.

Think of the true impact when your post is Re-Tweeted by 10 or 20 others. This could possibly expose your content to tens of thousands of Twitter users. Powerful stuff and lots of exposure which drives traffic to your site. But please, before you get overly excited, understand that only a small percentage of the people that the Tweet is exposed to will actually click through to your site. But if your message is clear enough, that may be enough to attract new followers.

So, when Tweeting, you must make sure that the message you want to send out is clear and positive. Also, understand the importance of making your message global. By making the Tweet globally recognised, the possibility of the Re-Tweet is limitless.

Do you track Re-Tweets to see what the impact is or is this something you have not given much attention to? Re-Tweeting is a fantastic and cost effective way to get your business message out to a wider audience. So when posting a simple Tweet today, remember the possibilities of where that Tweet may end up!

For further information on getting the best from your Twitter account contact Amy@freerpr.com.