For those new to Twitter, a retweet is a tweet that has been put back onto Twitter. It’s like an echo. A retweet gives a tweet new life and visibility; even for but a few minutes more.

You may have seen the “Retweet” button on Twitter and wondered what it does. A retweet allows you to share the original message out to all your followers. Say you see something that you really like, and wish you could have said that in the first place. Well, a retweet is the next best thing.

On Twitter, you want others to retweet you. A retweet exposes your words to more new followers. It’s a great way to get exposure in another Twitter network.

But how do you get retweeted? I asked my employee @SammBrown to say a few words on the subject:

@SammBrown says…

“Twitter is a great source of social media; but it can be a bit frustrating when it comes to the amount of words you can write.

You can only have 140 characters to write everything you want. It may be small; but it reads better. It is a well-known fact people don’t want to read long articles, so keeping it simple is the way to go.

When we write a good thought on twitter, we want it to get recognized and retweeted, because it shows that others are receiving our knowledge. Which, leads me to my main point.

When being retweeted, if you use up all of your 140 characters, your tweet will get cut off. If you are sharing your thoughts and knowledge, you don’t want it to be lost or unseen in any way.

The best way to keep your words seen is to go only up to 120 characters. This will allow others to retweet and add their comments without having your input taken away or unseen.

The whole point of social media is to connect with others and let them see and receive your knowledge. Following the 120-character rule will allow this perfectly.

Hoping this little information helped and Happy tweeting everyone. :-)”

The 120 rule that Sam is talking about is this…”Only use 120 of the 140 characters when you tweet”. When a tweet is retweeted, you will see a RT with a username in front of the re-shared tweet. The new retweet allows for quotes to be placed around the original tweet. Never the less, characters can get hacked off when a tweet is retweeted.

Not only that, but when someone goes to retweet and they find that there are more character than Twitter permits, they might abandon the whole retweet process. Editing someone’s tweet to shorten it is not what most people want to do.

Let’s take a look at what happens. I will use Hootsuite to demo the effect of a tweet that is too long in the first place:

Long tweet

Original tweet with too many characters to retweet

The above tweet has too many characters to be retweeted. Here’s what happens when I try to retweet it as is…

Retweet too long

-21 characters too much with this retweet

In order to send this tweet, I am going to have to take 21 characters off of the original tweet. I am going to have to edit it. The question now becomes, do I want to do this?

So when we only go to 120 characters, we make it easier for others to re-share our tweets without having to edit them.

Length is not the only thing to consider in getting retweeted. Good content usually gets retweeted. Are you sharing and writing good content that is worth retweeting in the first place?

Another thing to consider might be this…”Is it in the best interest for the viewer to retweet it in the first place?” A good recommend could get retweeted by the person that the tweet is directed to. So always be positive and complimentary to others. They will re-share these tweets.

So what is our walk-a-way for today? In order to gain greater visibility on Twitter, you are going to have to get retweeted. There are a few things you can do to get retweeted. Make sure your tweet is not too long, make sur e it’s good retweetable content and make sure you say good things about others.

Sam and I hope that you find this great content that is worth sharing to others; and re-share it on Twitter. Thanks 🙂