What’s the Value of a Retweet?
Monday, April 27th, 2009
On Twitter, the retweet is emerging as the best indicator of relevance for users of the service.
Whereas successful community-building used to be about getting followers, the realization is dawning that big numbers do not guarantee mindshare.? Thanks to myriads of mass follow tools available, the power of an immense following has diminished. (Some industry thought leaders have even wondered aloud if Twitter should abolish follower count altogether.)
At present, retweets are the best barometer for assessing one’s value on Twitter. A retweet is arguably more important than the original tweet. Tweets by themselves may be viewed with suspicion: is the content really that good? A retweet, though, is a third party endorsement. Someone else has come along and said, “I like this, so I’m sharing it with more people.”
A retweet is also what makes Twitter viral. By itself, a tweet is merely a mass broadcast message — much like a phrase uttered through a megaphone. But when someone repeats what you said with their megaphone, your message has suddenly become social. Imagine what happens, then, when you get a retweet of a retweet of your original tweet. Retweets don’t just qualify as word of mouth; they qualify as loud word of mouth. The retweet possesses the power of amplification. The more something is retweeted, the more audible it becomes.
Most importantly, retweets show that someone has derived value from your content. Just because you gain traffic from Twitter doesn’t mean it’s good traffic — visitors sometimes only stay five seconds. As well, a reply on Twitter is not necessarily sent because your audience likes your content; sometimes, people just want conversation. A retweet, though, means someone really did like your content, and they endorsed it.
Whether your audience is large or small, Twitter’s value is in sharing your message. Therefore, one’s first consideration should be getting retweets–or providing content that inspires them. Retweets are Twitter’s barometer for social relevancy. They are the easiest way to go viral. Most importantly, they show that someone likes your content.
Image via Teacher Dude. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Good article. I bet it does well in google for people typing in “retweets”. =) I also bet this article gets retweeted a lot.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:55 am
There is already Tweeple who ask for ReTweets. The followers is a numbers game and the spammers currently target this. If ReTweets provide some sort of advantage then the spammers will move in quick with multiple accounts and black hat techniques. RT’s are real easy to do – just copy and paste. They like quotations and news headlines already make up a large amount of the Twitter stream. It will ruin Twitter if it gets worse. I’m very thankful for that unfollow facility.
Perhaps Twitter needs to implement an algorithm that limits the number of RT’s that can be posted per day. This would help to retain quality and ease the load on their servers.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I think RT’s are a great way of spreading content that you think is worth spreading. After all, that is what Twitter is all about: sharing information. I also think that if you do RT something, that it’s always good to add your opinion, like why you’re RT’ing the post. Is it a great article? Why is it worth the read? This shows that you’re seriously endorsing the post and why you think others should read it.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] are active Diggers. With shouts on the way out, any person can tweet a link or further amplify it through the power of the retweet – giving a Digg story greater potential for going viral. Digg knows this and is gambling for a more [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
The value of a retweet is the credibility and popularity endorsement by third parties which raises interest and generates massive following and creates inbound links.