Adventures in Mobile Marketing

Regarding the ReTweet…

A new Twitter pal, who is a friend IRL (in real life) as well as a very talented food reviewer and author, re-tweeted Mashable. Oh, so wrong. I knew she was new to Twitter, so I cut her some slack. What is wrong with re-tweeting Mashable?

1) Don’t re-tweet A-list twitterers. They have tens of thousands of followers, so popularizing their content simply sends the message that either you don’t know they’re an A-lister, showing naivete, or that you are ass-kissing.

2) Don’t do a simple re-tweet. Contribute. You can get a whole lot out of Twitter if you treat it as a conversation, and that extends to re-tweeting. Add a note before the RT – not just “wow” or “neat” (guilty as charged, on that).

3) Inside jokes. Nobody likes to feel excluded, give back-up or follow-up info to those not part of the exchange.

Louis Gray goes into a lot of detail into the politics of re-tweeting in: “You have entered a No-Retweeting Zone Here.”

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Written on Saturday, 25. April 2009 at 14:05 In the category social networks. Follow the comments via RSS here: RSS-Feed. Read the Comments. Trackbacks- Trackback on this post. Share on FriendFeed

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5 Comments »

  1. I have to disagree with not RTing A-listers. While I agree that their message is getting out there anyway, so many people are new to Twitter and social media in general. They don’t know who the A-listers are, nor have them in their RSS readers, etc, and that content may still be interesting to them.

    My rule for a retweet or a like on Friendfeed is simple…did I like it and think other people would like it? This whole calculated liking and retweeting might be strategically valid, but I think it is also contrived and defeats transparency. I read Mashable all the time, and if they have something worth passing on I do, and considering the compliments I get on the content I share, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone (and no, not only noobs follow me).

    This whole notion of who and why it is ok to share (and the implication that other’s will find you “clueless”) is starting to remind me of the “I’m more alternative than you” hipster crap of my teenage years. Listening to a pop song and enjoying it doesn’t change your “cool” status, and dropping your support of a band once they become popular is not a sign of integrity…it shows you were just following the scene and didn’t care about the band in the first place. This is the same attitude. How about we share or retweet content just based on it being good content, and ignore the “underground” factor in that respect? Does someone’s content stop being share-worthy once their PR goes up? Or is it their traffic? What metric shall I use to decide when it is no longer “cool” to share their content?

    Comment: Neal Jansons – 25. April 2009 @ 3:39 pm

  2. Right- I do engage with A-listers, but don’t necessarily RT them, and I think “liking” on FF and RT’ing are very different things. BTW don’t especially like the method of forwarding likes from FF to Twitter.

    Comment: banane – 25. April 2009 @ 5:14 pm

  3. I agree…liking is different for many reasons. For one, it pulls things back up in the stream, so everyone is seeing it again (for good or ill). I tried the likes-to-twitter thing for a little bit…I found myself liking a lot less, hence not getting into those little random interactions that arise from liking, and that in turn make friendfeed such a nice little community.

    Comment: Neal Jansons – 18. May 2009 @ 10:09 pm

  4. I have to agree with Banane. I like to read what someone like Guy Kawasaki has to read, but the last thing I need to see again is a RT of his stuff. Good grief. In the database world and data normalization, you eliminate repeat groups. I think that should be applied to my Twitter stream. In fact, I think I should write a Twitter app that does that.

    Comment: Peter Chee – 28. August 2009 @ 11:10 pm

  5. still stand behind not-retweeting A-listers, unless it’s an occasional retweet. But still it’s highly unlikely that your small base won’t already be signed up to said A-lister.

    Peter- a Twitter repeat-groups app would rock.

    Comment: Anna – 01. September 2009 @ 11:55 am

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