A Dignifed Retweet

There’s no dignified retreat to the retweet frenzy these days. As of late, I’ve been retweeting a lot. Is that a sign that I’ve got nothing to say? You cannot afford to think so. The retweet is one of the most powerful tool in the Twitter-world.

Re-what?

What’s a retweet? It’s simply repeating an entry you’ve seen on Twitter by acknowledging its author. It’s not a native action on Twitter, but has been implemented by many applications and has become a standard use of the micro-blog service. It’s a gesture, the highest form of content approval, as the always very instightful Jeremiah puts it.

But, why do people retweet? Content and trust.

Retweet the Content

The 2008 China earthquake news was carried all over the place. The retweets about the recent events in Gaza, whatever your point of view, are also active. Living in Tokyo -the world’s leading Twitter city-, I can also only imagine what could happen if a earthquake hit.

Less catastrophically, think about the Montrin story. The amplification effect of scattered users not knowing each other was in full force. The buzz was alight. And Montrin learned the lesson the hard way.

Retweet the Trust

Trust is a personal matter: who, in your network, is trustworthy? People you know, people you care about, people you’ve been listening to and who have added value to you.

You trust = you might retweet. One trusts = he might retweet.

The relevancy of the message is hence multiplied by the trust factor.

Retweet the Authority

As in real life, trust is not only due to interpersonal relations, but also to some kind of authority.  When you watch CNN or read the WSJ, you do believe in the message for you trust their authority. The trend is similar on social media. While established brands have transferred their trust capital, some other players have build such authority.

The underlying dynamic is quite simple: as logically assessed in a recent study, a message that gets retweeted by many people you follow will be put on your radar quickly, enticing you to read it and maybe actually retweeting it.

The key people’s sheer presence on many users’ streams will boost the chance of a buzz getting traction, whatever one thinks about the recent debate on authority relevancy,

As a brand willing to understand the social media equation, you cannot afford ignoring those key people using the micro-blogging tool.

The retweetrank will help you learn about the all-time most retweeted users, helping you locate those active in your field. There’s also a nifty tool created by Dan Zarrella to catch up with who has been the most retweeted on the current day, week or month. Following trends on Twitter is like following trends everywhere else: it’s a basic of marketing.

Note that you might also want to check Dan’s @ReTweetTrends Twitter account: while it is meant to show retweet trends, it hasn’t been very useful as of late, for subjects are far too vast and unfocused; still you might want to check this very interesting idea, for it will certainly become more analytic in the future.

Retweet the Trend

To get more into the retweet dynamic, it’s also important to see how far and quickly the buzz can go. By studying the depth of retweets, Dan Zarrella concludes that most tweets are only retweeted once.

Less than 8 percent of the messages will have more than one retweet, giving them a high velocity factor. Or is it: almost 8 percent? The number is enough to create a very big echo chamber, creating real trends.

The study also justifiably fails to factor in the small amount of retweets that might be truncated to fit in the 140 characters allowance (people might erase acknowledgments). Moreover, users might just read a message and put their own spin on it. It’s technically not a retweet anymore, but it’s the same message carried over.

The Vital Retweet

As a brand, you cannot afford to ignore that retweet trend anymore. You might not want to open a Twitter channel, but even without hiring a chief networking officer, your external communication team should be aware of what’s happening in the micro-blogging world. Such potential buzz, positive or negative, has to be monitored.

And there’s no excuse: the retweet stream can be easily checked by looking at search terms like “retweet” or “RT” and the name of a brand on the Twitter search (or on this retweet search tool).

And you can do more. Earthquakes, Montrin, Gaza,… news aren’t always negative. Take the control back. Push for a positive message, an original one and you’ll be put on the map.

The Profitable Retweet

A recent success? Burger King USA offered a Whopper to anyone who would de-friend 10 people on Facebook and it became the most commented story last week on various micro-blog services, carrying the message way out of the US, promoting the brand everywhere.

Brand + original offer + retweet = viral on steroids.

Did Burger King use a Twitter channel to carry the news? It’s not even the point there. The message had a life of its own.

The Authoritative Retweet

What’s the lesson there?

Care about your message

Care about your customers

Care about key people, but don’t force your way becoming one.

It’s like it’s ever been: everything is in the message. Tweet something interesting, compelling, innovative, something that hasn’t been said before or that you say much better than the others and always tweet with you customers in mind. You’ll be in the game.

Get the content out, don’t think about your own authority on Twitter. Whatever tool that gets created to calculate authority will not define trust, since the relation between trust and authority will always remain a correlative and not a causal one. You’ll only gain trust by the messages you’re sending out.

Remember: most of the “authoritative” persona on Twitter are actually people that have something to offer, that have been creating content, products, services, that have been active outside of the pure Twitter circle. Become like them by being your own messenger. Get popular by caring about your customers even more than before. That will get the respect you deserve, hence the trust.

With trust, you’ll get followers and get more amplification to your message. Then, if you want to get in the retweet game yourself, do it wisely.

The Rebuzz

Until now, whenever a negative or positive buzz was spilling-over on the internet, it was mainly thanks to bloggers who quoted another blog and Facebook/MySpace users. It was already very fast, as traditional media’s editorial committees, printing costs and news delays were shunned.

Now, as you’ve seen, the fastest growing social network platform has allowed for a new online echo chamber to be created. A single retweet can be the spark that ignites a wildfire.

It’s, in a way, a new essence of viral marketing.

Add to that the integration of Twitter in blogs or Facebook, new kinds of blog tools, especially Tumblr, that offer re-blogs, Zemanta which offers the functionality for traditional blogs and the uprising FriendFeed with its reshare option and you’ve got a revolution that brings an even faster way of generating buzz among internet users.

It’s a new essence of word-of-mouth.