Are you “retweet-worthy”?

 Before I get into a discussion of whether you may or may not be “retweet-worthy”, I should mention that you can follow me and all of my adventures as a work at home mom of a toddler (trust me, ‘adventures’ is an understatement when they’re that age!) by heading over to http://www.twitter.com/JenKnox.

There, now that you’re following me, you might find that I occasionally post a “Twitter Best Practice” because I truly want to be able to create a community from my Twitter followers and those that I also follow. The problem is that I see many “tweeters” making a pretty basic mistake that can cost them the opportunity for a successful “retweet”. More on that later….

If you’re somewhat new to Twitter, each time you tweet a message, it can be “retweeted” or copied and forwarded by anyone to THEIR followers, thus increasing the reach and forwardability of your message. Consider that virtually anyone can hit that “retweet” button in their Twitter stream client and you can see that your messages could be forwarded over, and over, and over again. It’s really a powerful part of Twitter that shouldn’t be ignored.

Now, obviously, if you’re like me you tweet about daily life and fun stuff that maybe isn’t going to necessarily gain you a retweet and additional followers. That’s fine, and not every tweet has to be written with retweeting in mind.

However, there are definitely times when you are going to want people to retweet, and sometimes blatantly ASKING for the retweet (RT for short) isn’t going to be appropriate. So here are some tips to increase your “retweet-ability” and get your messages seen by more people and hopefully, gain you some new followers:

1. Offer a solution.

Does your tweet solve a problem or point someone toward a resource? Is it a topic that’s hot among the discussions in your Twitter stream? Proactively finding the solution to something that people are talking about is a great tweet that is highly likely to be retweeted.

2. Break the news.

Do you follow the news, sports or celebrity gossip? Why not tweet the occasional breaking news headline and pass on the news? News items, particularly emergency news and celebrity items are highly retweeted.

3. Leave ROOM for the retweet (my personal BEST practice, and the BIGGEST mistake I see people making).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a really superior tweet and have been anxious to RT it to my followers, only to find that once my RT and my username are added at the front, that half of the real “meat” of the tweet ends up cut off due to Twitter’s 140 character limit.

The BEST thing you can do, especially for tweets that you really think have the potential to be RT’d is to calculate how much room you need to leave in your tweet to allow for the RT, the retweeter’s username and maybe even a short comment.

The first step is to either automatically shorten your URL’s using your Twitter client (like Tweetdeck) or manually do so with a service like TinyUrl.com or Bit.Ly. That will cut the bulk dramatically.

Next, take into consideration the space required for a RT and a username. Twitter’s maximum character length for a username is 15 characters. With a RT and a space on each end, you should reserve 19 characters of your 140 for the RT part of the retweet so that RT’ers don’t have to shorten or edit your tweet.

Don’t leave it up to the RT’er to shorten or edit your tweet! If you have a very specific message you need conveyed, or one in which one word missing will change the meaning, better to have your tweet be short and descriptive than rambling and nonsensical once-edited.

You may also want to leave a few characters so that the RT’er can leave a comment in the RT to either clarify or endorse your tweet. For tweets that I REALLY want RT’ed I try to reserve about 15-20 characters so that there’s plenty of space to make a short comment.

140 characters – 19 characters for RT space – 20 characters for comment = 101 characters (and spaces) for a good , RT’able tweet!

In general, remember that your tweets to your actual followers are the most important ones. Crafting every single tweet with the idea that it will be RT’ed will drive you crazy! Schomooze a bit, make friends, make a joke and be yourself. The good RT’s and the ones with the further reach will be the ones people relate to the most, and the only way you’ll really know which ones will have that reach is to know your followers and create relationships with them.

Isn’t that what Twitter is all about?