5 Tips For Retweeting

This morning I deleted a large portion of the people that I follow on twitter. As I stated in this post, I am quite ruthless as a follower anyway, so that's not unusual. What IS unusual is what caused the sudden cull.

I noticed that the ENTIRE screen on my phone was filled with retweets. That's 14 retweets and not one bit of gossip, news or snark from any of the people I was actually interested in, and none of the retweets were of any interest to me at all. So I did a bit of research and I've discovered that boring retweeting is one of the top 10 reasons that people will unfollow you on twitter.

Here's how to avoid losing followers whilst still supporting your favourite brands/tweeters.

1. Don't retweet more than once in a row. Many users simply scroll over multiple retweets. Do you? If you are anything like me, you see someone retweeting something that doesn't interested you so you just scroll on down. 

 One careful retweet should be enough to engage your followers with another member. If it is, they can follow them if they want to and see all of their tweets. If it isn't, they probably don't want to read 5 more things from that individual. Fact.

2. Mix your retweets up with regular tweets. Of course, you might want to retweet more than one tweet from an indie business that you love, or have some other reason or wanting to retweet more than one link/advert/picture at one time. My prime advice in this situation would be to stick to my previously suggested formula:

1 personal tweet / 1 business tweet / 1 retweet

The only thing that you should consider doing more than once in a row is a personal tweet. There are lots of reasons why this is great advice, read more about mixing up your tweets here.

3. Don't retweet the same person mentioning you. Okay, we get it. Someone tweeted you. Maybe they are your friend in real life. Maybe they are a customer of your home business. Maybe they are a weird internet stalker. Who cares? Not your followers. I follow some brands (a particular Essex-based reality show's stars are notorious for this) that retweet every single mention they get.. Which is a lot. Well, they were unfollowed today because I don't want to see every gushing, grovelling, badly spelled message they get. Boring! My recommendation would be to retweet one tweet of this kind a day, and never from the same person (unless its hilarious!)

4. Celebrity retweets - you might love One Direction so much that every single thing that they say seems worthy of shouting from the rooftops. Face facts. Not everyone feels that way. If they did, they would be following them themselves, same as before, but it's even more true with celebrities. Everyone knows they exist. Everyone knows they are on twitter. If you have a number of followers with similiar interests, they have probably already seen the gem of a tweet you wanted to share anyway. Save your retweeting for indie brands/musicians who really need and want the exposure, and who your followers may not have heard of before.

5. Don't retweet personal responses. Bear in mind that most followers won't have seen the original tweet (unless they are following both you and the person you are addressing) and therefore retweeting a response is kind of like walking up to a buffet table, picking up a cake and throwing it in the face of someone you don't know. It might be fun and silly, but they will probably be highly confused. And need a wash.

Those are my tips :-) I compiled them from the internet and from my personal experience. You can read a little about why I am qualified to give Social Media advice (or why I *think* I am) here. You can read all of my posts on getting and keeping followers here.

What are your tips for keeping followers interested? I'd love to hear them.