After getting inspired by a blog post of a great guy I know on twitter @DannyBrown who wrote about I’s of social media in his blog post Putting the I in Social Media. I decided to write my own personal version of twitter. “Putting the R in twitter”. I’m just kidding, mine is about the R’s that personally helped me a lot in twitter and I feel it is something all of us should have. Sure we don’t have to follow all the R’s of twitter. However I think that there are a few that we should all follow. The three main R’s. Respond, Respect and Retweet.

Respond

Respond is one of the most important attitude which is a MUST have on twitter. I talked about this more in a blog post by @BarryckR at How Twitter Giants Manage Their Time Lines. I mentioned “IF you don’t have the heart or the attitude to talk or engage. Don’t be on social media“  Sure sometimes its hard to respond to every single tweet however it is better to reply to ONE tweet than ignoring all but try your best to responds to them as soon as you receive them. If its too late, try sending them a DM answering their questions or so. By using DM it makes your feeds less cluttered and avoid annoying people.

Respect

Respect every single people that follows you. Respect is as important as responding to your followers. Everyone wants to be respected, you have to earn your respect by respecting others first. Don’t try to earn them, instead give them with your heart. People will notice it. However don’t try so hard to please everyone. Its hard sometimes as people don’t always see things your way. Stick to what you say but don’t ignore others either.

Retweet

My personal favorite of all R’s, retweeting. Retweeting is important. Why? Because by sending ONE retweet you help TWO type of people.

1. The Original Source – Most of them appreciate when you share their blog post. They will even send you a tweet or a DM. People on twitter are friendly.
2. The People Following You -They love when you share with them something useful that they can connect with. Sometimes they will RT it if it is something they think can benefit people who are following them.

Ohh… Did i mention you get Retweets in return if they find your blog post entertaining or beneficial? They will even help you retweet your other tweets too.

Research

Want to know bout something? Research them by asking your fellow followers. People on twitter are extremely helpful. I sent out a tweet the other day asking information about linkedin groups. Within 5 minutes I’ve gotten a few replies from people recommending social media groups on linkedin. One of my followers who took the time to help me in linked in was @AskDebra which recommended me to join a group.

Relax

After a long day of work, you should relax by using twitter and connecting with your family if they are on twitter, connecting with your friends, and networking with new people. Of course don’t forget that you have people around you that loves you too. My tip to all this is, if you don’t feel like going on twitter, don’t force yourself to. If you feel exhausted, don’t worry, we all have those days. @AdamConsulting wrote a blog post on how to overcome social media burnout. Twitter is about having FUN FUN FUN by connecting and sharing.

Repeat

Repeat the R’s everyday if you have time to spend on twitter. It takes 5 minutes to reply people, 5 minutes to retweet and the others R’s might take you another 10 minutes if you have a busy schedule. Get applications for mobile to take your twitter on the go. You can even reply people while waiting for the bus or get latest news to retweet while waiting or if you have time on your hands.

Recently I read tweets about other people mentioning about stealing tweets. Although some of the cases are true. Some cases are not.

Some people I know are great at sharing tweets while the one retweeted it did not include the original source or took out some names.

One of the twitter etiquette is always credit the original poster or tweeps who tweet them. If you don’t then maybe you will get away with it once or twice but you will not get away with it forever. Somehow one day people will find out that you stole tweets from other tweeps or twitterers.

However i found out that some tweeps really steal tweets. I know this is simply because some tweets are unique and not those link tweets.

I found out about this when the original poster of the tweet contacted me and so I saw her tweet was used by a verified twitter account and people retweeted that tweet and thought that guy was a genius. No names will be mention in this post. I also did search to check and make sure there were no misunderstandings.

Example:

Original Tweet:

Copied and modified tweet

Simply copy and paste tweet

As you noticed second tweet is identical with the first. Just the tweet has been modified.

I’m not so sure why some people prefer to copy tweets and do not bother crediting the original source of the tweet. Crediting the original source is one of the methods to build a relationship. When you retweet someone they will appreciate it and one day they might retweet you too.

However in some cases it is not exactly true. Some cases it might cause misunderstanding. Here are a few situations that may cause misunderstanding.

1. Tweet gets retweeted too many times and names are left out.

2. Tweets are too long (150 characters). The original twitterer wasn’t credited yet the one who RT-ed it got credited.

However, the fun part about twitter is sharing.  Twitter is about engaging as well and not only posting interesting tweets. So credit the  tweets and build relationship. That is the fun part about twitter. You do not have to “look” interesting. “BE” interesting by being YOU.

Picture source geekandpoke

What is a retweet? A retweet something created by twitter users themselves. Its a way people use to share what they like from other twitterers.

The top retweeted twitter user on twitter will be @RevRunWisdom who has 2, 547, 051 retweets! Yes 2 MILLION retweets.  So who are the top 50 Most ReTweeted Twitter Users of All Time? Here is a print screen of the most retweeted people on twitter of all time.

If you want to follow these top user you can follow them through @dailyrt list at @dailyrt/mostretweeted

In my future blog post I will be posting an analytic on the top 50 most retweeted twitterers.

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Picture source: flickr

Sources: dailyrt, bigisthenewsmall