One of the benefits of using Twitter in addition to conversation is to drive traffic to your blog posts. According to Dan Zarrella's "Science of ReTweets" presentation (which I got to see in person at Social Fresh Nashville this week) there are certain words that encourage people to ReTweet. For instance, if you use a phrase like "check out" or "new blog post" you're more likely to get a ReTweet. This is very valuable information to someone who's interested in getting ReTweets, but there's something to consider in addition to this: your personal ReTweet character count.
Determining Your Personal ReTweet Character Count
So we all know that you get 140 characters per Tweet. Whenever you post something and hope for a ReTweet, you need to keep in mind how many characters you should leave blank when someone wants to ReTweet you. In other words, don't use up all 140 characters and therefore force someone to modify your original Tweet just so they can share the love. I suspect people won't take the time to do that and will pass on the ReTweet instead.
Here's how to figure out your personal ReTweet character count.
- Step 1: Count the number of characters in your Twitter username. In my case, I'm billseaver, so my username character count is 10.
- Step 2: Add four to the total count in step 1. This accounts for the "RT" that comes with a ReTweet, a space, and the "@" sign before your name. My total, then, is 14.
- Step 3: Subtract your total number from the original 140 characters you have in Twitter. In my case 10+4=14. 140-14=126. So my personal ReTweet character count is 126 characters and I don't want to exceed that character count whenever I'm posting something that I hope will be ReTweeted.
The bottom line here is that this is a quick way to make sure you give yourself every possible opportunity to get a ReTweet when you're looking for it. Don't use up all the available Twitter characters to provide space for the person who may want to ReTweet you.