This morning, as I do on most, I went through my feeds in Bloglines looking for blog posts that I could share with my followers on Twitter. I read Mike Sansone's post on how beginners can get started with Social Media, and knew it would be a post that many of my Twitter friends could find valuable.
So I linked to it on Twitter, and almost immediately, my followers began Re-Tweeting it to their followers. If you aren't that familiar with Twitter, a Re-Tweet is when you re-send a message that someone else sends, and you share it with your followers. So I shared the link with my 2,000+ followers, and within minutes, about a dozen of my followers had Re-Tweeted the link to THEIR followers! Within a matter of minutes, thousands of Twitter users were exposed to this post.
This is why Social Media is so important, because it is SO easy for people to quickly share and spread ideas. If you have an idea/post/story that resonates with others, it can literally zoom around the world, via the internet, in minutes.
Not every business should be on Twitter, but given the communal nature and the ease at which ideas can be shared, I think every business should at least spend some time there and see if it's right for them. If we aren't connected already, you can follow me on Twitter here.
8 comments:
Hi, great post. I'm just starting with twitter. and you know what I have no idea how to retweet. How do i do that?
Hi Marina! If you use a Twitter client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck, when you mouse over the person's avatar, one of the options will be to retweet their tweet. Just click on the appropriate symbol (arrow/arrows pointing to the right) and there you go!
As for the web version of Twitter, I never use it so I had to ask my Twitter friends. They all said all you have to do is cut and paste the tweet you want to retweet! I would add at least a RT: in front of it so everyone knows what you are doing.
Does that help?
Echoing Mack but providing more detail, if you are using twitter.com and not a third-party application (Twhirl, TweetDeck, Twitterfox, etc) and you click the "Home" link, you'll see everyone you follow with their pictures and messages.
Suppose you want to retweet Mack's message as follows:
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mackcoller Blah blah less than 5 seconds ago from TweetDeck in reply to ariherzog
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You can copy the relevant sections and paste it to look like the following:
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RT @mackcoller Blah blah
---
Does that help?
Thanks for planting the seed in your community - but thanks more for this great post.
So many don't know where to begin on Twitter - this kind of resource sharing and re-sharing is one of the best ways to begin.
It also helps make great connections as I've begun following all those who retweeted:-)
I do believe in the power of re-tweeting! ;) TweetDeck is awesome albeit a little slow at updating timelines at times. I really like the fact I can create 'groups' of people I am following for e.g. trends / US community / UK community.
BTW, I would really switch to google reader if I were you - miles better than Bloglines. It's dead easy to import your feed from bloglines to google reader by creating an OPML file :)
Yes! The speed of communication today truly is unbelievable. Through blogs/posts and many other social media networks your words, thoughts, and ideas can be spread via web in a matter of minutes. And that, to me, is simply amazing!
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Increasingly I am wondering why any business would not be experimenting with blogs and social media. Even if they were "dark". There is very little to lose and everything to gain from even a small investment (ie 2 hours a week).
Hi Mack, interesting post. Do you think the Obama result has vindicated the role of twitter, mobile marketing and other social media as a mainstream medium in influencing young consumers? Whilst it's useful to talk of Social Media having played a key role in his success does that also make trad media defunct? What of Ron Paul? Despite his huge groundswell of Social Media, it was very much traditional media (eg Fox & O'Reilly) that put pay to his efforts, dont you think?
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