Can You Harness The ReTweet Phenomena

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

It seems that Twitter is going from strength to strength and the latest ‘fad’ is that of ReTweeting. If your not sure what a ReTweet is, in simple terms, it is the practice of someone taking your Tweet and Twittering it through to all their followers.

Unlike social bookmarking sites where submissions are ‘voted’ on, ReTweets send the content from one group of followers to another. This is similar to Digg where you can vote of Digg a submission and also send it on to everyone who is following you.

Whilst Digg is a little on the nose these days, Twitter is just gaining in strength. The question then is whether or not you can put this ReTweeting phenomena to use for your business. We have already seen Tweets go viral with huge flows of traffic to the website that instigated the Tweet.  There is a video interview between WebProNews and the Huffington Post that expands on this concept and well worth watching.

To make use of this fad requires content that people find interesting and worth sharing with others. If you can include promotional information, so much the better. However, when it comes to business, your aim should be to get users to click through to your site (not just an off site search engine optimization goal). Provide the right content and let others ReTweet it for you – the ultimate in viral marketing – and it only takes 140 characters.