Don’t Be Afraid To Retweet… Your Own Tweets
Some Twitter-users believe that they should never – ever – retweet their own messages. It would be rude and selfish to do so; followers would get the impression that they’re just out to promote themselves and their articles (or products).
And so on and so on.
Tweetsmarter.com tries to answer the question whether ‘is it OK to retweet your own tweets’ and offers the following advice:
- Repeat key tweets only once in a 36-hour period (two tweets in total), and spread them 8-12 hours apart;
- Repeat key tweets no more than once every 60-90 days;
- Repeat key tweets four or more times, once every 39.5 (or 15.5) hours;
- Repeat key tweets four or more times, once a week at a different times of day
The piece also notes that Guy Kawasaki often reposts his own tweets – not just once, but several times. The reason? He has discovered that “repeating the same tweet three times nearly triples the number of clicks the link in the tweet gets. So, since clicks are money to his business, he repeats almost every tweet four times. If he didn’t, a majority of the audience he reaches wouldn’t see the tweet.”
These are great strategies, I guess, but I believe it’s best to do… what you think is right for you. For instance, if you tweet 30 times a day, it is not a problem – at all – for you to repeat one or two of them. This will simply increase the likelihood of your followers actually reading this – vital – tweet(s).
Mostly importantly, don’t let anyone tell you what to do or how to do it. Use Twitter (and other social networks for that matter) actively, experiment and draw your conclusions from the results you’re getting. If your followers hate it when you retweet your own tweets, don’t do it. If they don’t, or better: if your articles receive many more clicks because more people see the tweet, go ahead and do it. Yes, do it regularly – if you don’t have a problem with that yourself, that is.
If you choose not to repeat your tweets, that’s fine; as long as it’s your decision (based on feedback from your followers), not some outsider’s who doesn’t know you or your followers.
No related posts.
Actually, I wrote more generally (we retweet other people’s tweets for the most part) but I realize that what most people are interested in whether they should repeat their own tweets.
If you repeat your own tweets, I would suggest you also consider repeating whatever content your followers find most popular…whether it is something you wrote first or not
Hi Dave, thanks for the response.
Retweeting other people’s tweets versus your own: yeah, I found that more interesting to focus on for this post. Agreed with the second point!
I think that one of the main keys to ‘tweeting smart’ is to know your followers and to treat them as customers. Give them what they want, feed their needs.
Interesting. When I write a blog post I tend to tweet it several times the same day to do increase reach but I am aware that it may annoy some people.
Spreading it to different times on different days as well seems like a really good idea.
Glad you found it an interesting article, Robert. Re. spreading it to different times: yes, that’s very, very effective. Especially if you’re writing for an international audience (if not: global). In this regard, also see my post about BufferApp:
http://michaelblogs.com/double-your-twitter-clicks-schedule-your-tweets/
We who work in DominioFeminino usually repeat the tweets, however, we drafted another text for the link. With the new tweet text is not repetitive. Other brazilian journalists learned from us. I find this very interesting. We are doing school.
But this is not the same as retweet ourselves. 
Oops a time.
We did not create matter out of the text of the link. We just use a text sentence of article or story of what is already in the link.
DF: yes, that is 100% correct and it’s important to point out for others: If you just change the link (so the url shortener) or add one word (or change it), twitter doesn’t consider it repeating the same message and it is posted. It can be very, very useful.
Good to hear that you’re already using this method! We’re all learning as we go, though: that’s what’s so great about these new media!
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