The fastest-growing, most powerful Web 2.0 site for Internet marketers and affiliate marketers is Twitter – no doubt about it. Yet most online marketers have yet to take the time to figure out the ins-and-outs of Twitter – they just sign up for an account and start sending our their posts, called ‘tweets’ on Twitter.

Today I want to shed some light on the process of ‘retweeting’ – passing along tweets from others to those following you on Twitter. Remember that what you see there and what your followers see is different – each person creates their own ‘Twitterverse’ based on who they choose to follow. Twitter is whatever you want it to be, since the only tweets you see are those from those people you’re following – and not the tweets made by anyone else. So unless someone is following all the same people you are, the tweets they see – and in fact their whole Twitter experience – will be different from yours.

Failing to retweet some of the posts you see is the ultimate ego-centric mistake on Twitter. The people following you do so because they expect great information from you, whether it be general conversation, business talk of links to your sites, blogs and affiliate promotions. People should know what to expect from you based on your bio at Twitter – if you’re using it for marketing purposes, make sure your information there reflects that.

So if you’re sending out great tweets in line with what your followers expect, wonderful! But if that’s all you’re sending out, it’s like you’ve decided no one else knows anything about that topic, or that your followers don’t deserve any more insight than you can provide. Tsk tsk – such blatant conceit! Obviously through the course of every day you’re going to see great information posted by others – so why wouldn’t you pass that along to the people following you?

Since most of them wouldn’t see it otherwise, you should be passing along information from others on a regular basis. Obviously you wouldn’t retweet a competitor’s link to a product you’re promoting, but that still leaves a lot of other posts you can pass on… After all, don’t you appreciate it when others retweet YOUR tweets?

If you find that none of your posts ever get retweeted, either what yo’re sending isn’t truly usefull to your followers or people have noticed that you don’t send retweets yourself, and have decided not to help you that way either. Either way, shape up – or you’re wasting your efforts with your Twitter marketing. Become known for being a usefull and helpfull supplier of quality tweets and retweets and your following will soar – fail and you’ll languish in the Twitter doldrums. It really is up to you.

Now granted, retweeting isn’t that easy on the Twitter site itself, which is one reason that software like TweetDeck is so popular. This free software provides a more organized and configurable interface for using Twitter, including one-click retweeting. But retweets can still be sent from your Twitter page…

To do that, copy the entire post you want to retweet, including the ID of the original tweeter. In your message box, type ‘RT @’ (without the quotes) and then paste in the tweet you copied. You need to include the @ sign because the ID as it shows in your Twitter feed doesn’t include it. If the retweet is now too long, over the 140-character limit, look for ways to shorten it without changing the meaning or disabling any links or the original tweeter’s ID. Common shortening steps include replacing ‘to’ or ‘two’ with 2, replacing ‘for’ with 4, etc.

There’s another side to retweeting too – not only are you passing additional great information and resources to those following you, but having the original tweeter’s ID in the post means they’ll see it too. Most will remember this and be more receptive to retweeting some of your tweets as well.

The other issue with retweeting shouldn’t need to be mentioned, bt experience has shown me it DOES need to be addressed. When another Twitter user retweets one or more of your tweets, THANK THEM! They’ve passed long your info, put your link out to their followers, and in essence have identified you as a good source of information. Almost every time ou get retweeted, you’ll see a few more people sign up to follow you – and these are thanks to the person who sent your info to their existing followers. So whenever you see someone retweeting one of our posts, hit reply and send a simple “Thanks for the RT!” or something similar.

When it comes to marketing on Twitter, retweets are one of your best weapons – both your retweets of other’s best posts and your posts that get retweeted. Use your best judgement, follow the retweeting etiquette described here, and have a fun & profitable time using Twitter as an ongoing part of your overall online marketing strategy.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more marketing help – follow SuperAffil and CaptnAffiliate, and for more help with your Twitter marketing, be sure to swing by our Road To Twitter Success website.

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