Retweeting Excessively – Twitter’s New Version of Spamming?
For some reason, some companies and even some individuals like to over utilize the retweet button on Twitter. The logic of the tactic is that they will gain more followers just by using others’ best content, but that is not how it usually works out for them.
As a member of Twitter, or “tweeter,” you have decided to be an active participant in an innovative real-time social platform. You have made the decision to engage with like-minded individuals and create a community that you can do whatever you want with. More importantly, you have decided to listen to what others have to say about topics you are interested in. This is a pretty amazing tool when utilized correctly.
Unfortunately, some tweeters aren’t taking this opportunity seriously enough. They are failing to create their own value and add to the conversations. Instead, they are playing “middleman” by becoming a content aggregator and duplicating relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) content.
The science of Twitter will never let this strategy work out for the tweeter. Over the last year, as Twitter became more and more popular to the media, everybody felt the need to jump on board without even taking the time to completely understand its power and potential. It was here that this and other similar strategies took effect. And it all happened right around the same time that spammers began getting aggressive on the network.
So, what happened? The smarter spammers realized that DMs were not converting for them and that there had to be other ways. With the birth of the retweet function within Twitter’s functionalities, these users saw the opportunity to send out content quick and easy, and hoped that it would allow other users to find them through the use of keyword search or just simple gratitude from the content’s originator.
While I’m not saying that retweeting is a bad tactic (in fact, it’s quite the contrary), there is a fine line between effectively using the function and being utterly annoying. Retweeting, in conjunction with creating and sending out original content, is the formula to Twitter success.
People need to use Twitter with this understanding. Twitter started out as a mobile platform that sent text message updates from friends and loved ones. Pretend that all of your followers are following your account to their phones. Will they enjoy your casual updates disrupting their normal everyday lives? Or will they quickly unfollow you because you are sending out tweets from other users.
Ultimately, if I wanted to hear that many updates from a user, I would follow them myself.
