The Power of the retweet – an interesting subject because most of us use the twitter retweet on a daily basis, but rarely do we look under the hood to look at how far our tweets have gone.
Recently two things hit home at just how powerful the retweet button is and why maybe more of us in business should aim higher and look for more twitter reach than just the thumbs up when we get 1 or 2 retweets
The first incident when it hit home was on our previous blog on Altrincham Christmas Markets which on one tweet alone got retweeted 21 times to a reach of 23,948
That’s powerful stats when you consider the local towns population is only around double that number
And then of course there are national issues which take off from a small cluster of tweeters and explode. The most recent incident of this was the #racisttramwoman and #mytramexperience hashtags which via a combination of total shock and retweets lead to a shocking youtube video going from Zero hits to over 2.5 millions views (at the time of writing this blog) which lead to the said woman’s arrest. To give you an idea of how quick this escalated when we tweeted about it at just before Midday the video has 10,000 hits and 24 hours later you’ve seen how fast that has grown.
2 very different scenarios – one a local positive story and another a shocking national story – but it’s important for businesses to realize the huge reach of twitter and come to terms that twitter isn’t just about the small numbers, the combined weight of positive supporters can lead to a tsunami of vocal support for your business
Remember that core marketing message you’re getting across can reach just as many people as the traditional paid for advertisements in journals and newspapers
Now I imagine most, if not all, of you will retweet positive comments about your business, but what can you put in place to gain retweets on a regular basic
* Engage with your followers – strengthen that relationship so the customer feels valued – twitter is a 2 way conversation
* Retweet others – business partners, potential business partners or clients – treat other people as you’d like to be tweeted yourself
* Be inventive – don’t just tweet the same line’s each day – be spontaneous, interesting and make those 140 characters flow
* Add Humour – Twitter is casual, don’t be afraid to add humour into your tweets (unless of course your business is shirts and cufflinks)
And now with all that in mind go and have a look at www.retweet.co.uk to see how your top tweets and recent tweets fare plus who you retweet the most
Let us know how you get on and contact us if you require more info on social media or twitter training
