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Three Ways To Thank People for A Retweet

by Luca Filigheddu on October 23, 2009



Three Ways To Thank People for A Retweet

I don’t have accurate numbers (update: lots of information here), but I bet the number of retweets on Twitter is becoming actually higher than “original” tweets. Just think of tweets coming from popular blogs like Mashable or Techcrunch, whose news posted on Twitter usually got retweeted hundreds times.

Now, let’s say I retweet an interesting message from a twitter user just because I find it interesting and want to share it with my followers. Many people tend to send a “thank you” tweet because of this. While it is fair and I can’t but appreciate that, those “thank you” add noise to the already noisy twitter stream and can be source of distraction. Those “thank you” get my attention since I see there are new “@” to check but don’t really add much value to me.

In certain cases, if the retweet involves more users, the risk is to see your stream filled with lots of reciprocal “thank you”. Not good, right?

All that said, I just wanted to suggest three alternative ways to thank someone without adding more noise but, on the contrary, adding value for the person you are saying “thank you” to.

Retweet

The best way to say thank you for a retweet you get from someone, is to check that user’s timeline and retweet one of his tweets you think could be interesting for your followers. Easy right?

Post a link to his/her blog

If you see the user you got the retweet from is a blogger, what about posting a link to one of his/her post on Twitter? As a blogger, I can assure you this would be much appreciated and 100x more valuable than a “thank you”.

Recommendation

Another great way to say “thank you” is to recommend that user to your followers. The best way to to that is through MrTweet. MrTweet is a service that lets you find the best Twitter users who could be interesting for you and a recommendation given through it is definitely a great gift for any Twitter user. Don’t forget to let MrTweet send a tweet about it, so your new friend will be aware of your recommendation.

mrtweet recommendation

In conclusion, the three easy methods described above will definitely please your Twitter followers who retweet your content a lot and will make them so happy that they would love to say “thank you” to you. Make sure they read this post then, so retweet it now! :-)

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  • I agree with points one and two and have done both but have to admit they're quite time consuming and may not be prudent in all cases. It's may not be wise to retweet just because someone retweeted your post. If you want to have people pay attention to your tweets then you will want to only tweet things that are really valuable to others. So what if the person who retweeted you doesn't have anything in their timeline or on their blog that will be valuable to your followers? Will you tweet it anyway? The same principle applies to point three. If you recommend someone who retweeted you who happens to be spammy or banal, will your followers thank you for that recommendation? Probably not, most likely they will lose trust in your recommendations and may even start to ignore your tweets all together.
  • Well, I actually say "retweet one of his tweets you think COULD be interesting for your followers". There could be a case when you can't do anything of the three things mentioned in my post. Well, in that case the best is just doing nothing (IMHO).
  • Sorry I missed that Luca. Glad to hear you agree. Thanks for taking the time to share this post with us. :)
  • I agree that the best way to thank folks for a RT is to follow and interact with them. To me, that's what Twitter is about... Good post, thanks :-)
  • Thank you for retweeting that sweet pic of Linus Torvalds giving Windows 7 a big thumbs up http://ff.im/-ampn6. Haha. It was your retweet that brought me to your timeline and then to your blog with this excellent post. Much respect! ~@kim
  • Kim,
    you are a master in "Twitter etiquette". Can't but learn from you! :-) Btw, that picture of Linus is great!
  • Kim, you are a master in "Twitter etiquette". Can't but learn from you! :-)
    Btw, that picture of Linus is great!
  • pandaziri
    Tks for quote! :D

    ( quindi sono promosso? :D )
  • Cum laude :-)
    Sent from my BlackBerry®
  • This post is great. I have used all of the methods you recommend here, but never thought about writing about them. I use MrTweet ofter, and the only caution I have is this, if you find a handful of people on MrTweet to follow you don't want to send those tweets out at the same time. Otherwise you will have 5 or 10 tweets about your MrTweet activity in a row which would just be more "noise".

    I love your site. You are using some pretty good plugins or widgets. I like that one article recommended that I add it to Diigo and another prompted me to subscribe via RSS. And what a great idea to make everyone scroll past all of your ads and other links before they get to the comments section. Sweet.

    I'll be commenting more soon, but I have a question for you about this. If I sign up to comment with Disqus can I have my blog and my twitter link appear next to my comments?

    Thanks again and I am now following you on twitter!





  • Definitely. With Disqus, you can even login through Twitter. Thanks for stopping by!
  • I think you made some good points. So did Glenn Hilton. I'll definitely use your tips when appropriate. Will I still thank for RTs? Yes, some of the time. Why? 1. Because I believe in expressing appreciation. 2. Sometimes it's via those "Thanks for the RT's" that I'm alerted to good stuff I missed earlier in the tweetstream. So I think they can be valuable for sharing. Like anything, best practice is In Moderation. :)
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