When retweets was first introduced, I was really really so much into it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever especially with the fact that if someone retweets your article, then there’s a good chance more than a thousand people can actually see it and have the opportunity to retweet it as well. It’s mainly because the potential of Twitter is really there.
Of course at first, I really didn’t figure out how I can get that much retweets that would enable me to reap those benefits. I started to install that little Tweetmeme plugin so that my readers can start retweeting my article for me. Obviously I started to realize that each of the 100 visitors will not really retweet it.
So what I did then was start using Twitter genuinely. I started following people that is related to what I’m blogging and started really giving tweeting some time. Eventually my follower count started growing and interaction has been more lively now. And not surprisingly with that, I started getting retweets.
The highest retweet count that I got is 133 and not surprisingly it came from a contest post. But then I got a little contented with the fact that at least I was getting more than 10 retweets almost every time. And now I started wondering. Is this retweets really worth it? or is it just a number that you could flaunt and brag to other people?
Ok ok. Unlike in the previous posts, I’m not gonna flash out some geeky numbers on your screen or some screenshot from Google Analytics and then explain it one by one. Studying the behavior from Twitter is a quite a it tricky that just showing stats doesn’t mean anything that much.
So for this year, Twitter has sent me over a 1000 uniques and more than 2500 pageviews. Of course the bounce rate and stickiness weren’t as effective as let’s say guest post campaigns and stuffs. Twitter has so many bot accounts and in fact I have a couple for myself and the reason for that is mainly for testing. If someone is being followed by 1000 bots, that will not make any sense right so I guess that’s why it’s not converting that well.
Of course the main benefit of it is that it’s free and if utilized well, it can be a source of free yet targeted high quality traffic for any site. But how can one utilize it and maximize its benefits? That’s literally the question of every blogger in this space. I know big guru bloggers utilize it so well that for instance, Shoemoney even called as “the best marketing medium” right now.
For me what I do is basically just host all my shortlinks via bit.ly. Bit.ly has some free basic tracking which is pretty darn good. You can find the no.of unique clicks, no.of referrers/retweets, the location they were retweeted and even the day to day activities of your posts. In fact, I already considered it’s PRO program just because of how slick it is.
If you’re using other shorteners, I’m pretty sure they have their built-in trackers as well so make sure you’re making the most by using that to analyze things.
So all in all, retweets really matter. As I said above, I got some pretty good (yet not really massive) traffic from it and from a hindsight I can say that it’s one good way to get new readers to your blog. The number of RT’s alone can quite a bit be misleading but the traffic stats will always speak for themselves. From that on, its just a matter of tweaking it more and more.
What do you think? Maybe you have some secrets to share as well?
Well, Melvin, whenever I comment, I always had something to say and that something will almost benefit not all but certain players. This few days I realize something about retweet button, that I’m not sure whether you realize or not, by putting the retweet button below the content seems to get more click through then putting on the top of the content.
Here’s why, usually people will not retweet unless the content is good, well… as far as reading content is concern, normally reader will read finish then retweet but here’s the problem, most reader including me is lazy to even scroll up again to retweet it, so putting below the content seems to be easier for reader to retweet then scrolling up to retweet.
I’m not sure about you, as I’m still testing it.
I think retweets are really useful for new bloggers; it’s a source of traffic and for most of them (wannabe bloggers) traffic is a motivation.
Oh I think they really do make sense. I have received a few retweets during July (highest was 12 on one post) and really believe they have helped spike my traffic.
At least you give readers a chance to share your article to their followers if they feel it useful
i have never gained much out of twitter and retweets…..
infact i need a good guide to help me…..
The retweet button works for me whenever I ask my retweet group for help. Then, that seems to stir more interest in the article.
I do like the Bad Blogger’s suggestion about putting the retweet button at the end of the article.
Mike
I don’t personally update on Twitter that much. Most of my tweets comes from my blogs but I do hit that retweet button on articles that I liked reading.
I think it’s a good way to share something that you like or care about.
I took it out as it was causing a lot of W3C validation issues. Even otherwise, anyhow hardly a few 10s visitors were coming from retweets and tweets as I stopped using twitter 🙂 These days, I just tweet important posts manually.
Getting retweets is not a big deal.. What really matter is who is tweeting your post.. if it gets retweeted by some power user. You will be lucky enough to get some quality traffic + subscriber…
I have retweet buttons at the start of the post page as well as the end of it.. I used this logic long back and I want to make the experience good for my readers..
Well… is very hard to get retweet by power user… as you say if you are lucky…
As long as having a Retweet button on my posts help me with some free traffic, I will always keep it.
I have multiple Retweets button on my page to encourage Retweets.
The max no of Retweets I got without any effort was probably only 10-12. I have not checked what my max is but it will surely be one of my contest posts.
Well, the highest retweets I got for a blog post is 245, in January. And getting retweeted by a power user is not very hard, actually. You just got to be friends with them. They usually are very kind and friendly, which is why they are a power user, anyways. 🙂
I’m not sure about you, may be they like your content, because I had once email to power user and most of them did not reply… those who reply said my blog had stuff which he do not want his readers to be involve, as it will decreased his reputation towards his readers…
You see, may be my situation is different from you because my blog doesn’t seem to really good for people to read as in people want to read something good, but most of the time I’m writing something bad…
Hi Melvin, Retweets are great and I think that using CommentLuv is an even bigger incentive. I will be more likely to retweet a post that I know I just left a backlink to a related post via CommentLuv.
Like this post – for sure! As you can see my CommentLuv link ties nicely into the Power Twitter User theme of this post.
Thanks!
I hardly get reader to retweet myblog post s well, maybe if I start following people in my niche, I will get more retweet and more followers.