The aRT of the RT: Enthusiasm Levels
Mike Brown has nice handwriting. RT that.
I often meet my friend Mike Brown, the guru over at the Brainzooming Group, for coffee. Actually, Mike doesn’t drink coffee and cannot abide a place that smells like coffee, yet somehow we manage to meet at a local coffee spot every now and again to talk business, collaboration, creativity and the absurdities of life in general.
Speaking of absurdities, Mike is pretty active on Twitter (as am I) and a while back we were discussing the Art of the Retweet, or “RT” as it’s known on Twitter. If you’re into Twitter, you know that when you see something pretty cool that might be of interest to your Tweeps (readers, followers, etc.) you “retweet” it.
Example:
RT: @PRWeekUS Poll: Did Ricky Gervais misrepresent the Golden Globes as a host? http://www.prweekus.com/online-polls/section/990/
RTs are nice, but aren’t always great at demonstrating your true level of enthusiasm. Sometimes when you RT, you’re just moving things along without fully reading it (come on, you know you do–at least sometimes) or with little thought. But, sometimes you want to really make sure people read what you’re broadcasting, so you add a comment at the end <in between brackets> like this:
RT @MEAndersFit Looking at Pilate’s Cross by J. Alexander Greenwood @A_Greenwood at #smashwords http://smashwords.com/b/6806 Cannot wait to read this book! <This rocks! Thanks!>
But Mike was thinking maybe we need to work out a few bracket comments to make sure people really smell what you’re steppin’ in. For example, if you’re jealous that a Tweep can write a blog post every day seemingly without effort:
RT @Brainzooming Blogging Challenges? Ideas for When You Find Blogging Difficult http://bit.ly/hLCaHJ #blogging #sm #writing #creativity <snarky>
Mike had some other good ones, like <gusto> for something you really dig, or <PR Hack> tweets I make on behalf of clients, or <by rote> or <not paying attention> for ahem, other posts you RT.
I still have the napkin he wrote them on. I’m not sure how to retweet the napkin with <gusto> but I’ll give it a try.
Next time, #hashtags and #browns.
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