Some musings after recent having a retweet affect some people’s view of me, in a negative way.
Now we all know that retweeting adds a sheen of being in the know, a helpful person, knowing who to follow, but we do sometimes need to consider just what that tweet we’re saying is worth our followers, our network, taking notice of.
No matter how much you want to spread the word on behalf of your chum, colleague, boss – what will people think of what you are endorsing. Does it matter to you if some people will consider the link that you are suggesting they visit is dreadful and perhaps not up to your usual professional standard?
Twice now I have retweeted a link from someone that I considered a good sort – not even a close friend in either case, but I wanted to give them a bit of “moral support” in their latest endeavour – almost on a whim and just feeling friendly.
The first time I was asked if I had in fact used that person’s services myself – I had not, but I would – I was caught a bit on the hop though, I must admit (see the blog post ReTweeting on Twitter)
And the second time I was simply helping to spread the word in support of a friend’s launch. And it was to a web page that I cringed at, personally – not at all my style nor something I would encourage anyone to create. However this person knows their way in business and is pretty successful in their own right – so their methods may not be what I would endorse or buy into, but I am well aware that my way is considerably more conservative than many, especially in the world of Internet marketing (I’ll convince you all in the long run – I will, I will!). So I put aside my own snobbery and respect that the person I was retweeting knows what they’re doing – and stand by my retweet as I know that the offer being made was a genuine one, however it was being marketed.
Just something to think on though – two people that I hold in high regard pointed out that the link I had retweeted was dreadful (in so many words)… And that did bother me – two trusted business friends let me know that my retweet was not up to scratch – how many others did not share their opinion with me.
What do you think of this of retweeting something that you’re not quite happy about, and do you retweet without actually being sure of what you’re suggesting your followers give some of their attention to?
As we all get really stuck into Twitter, we need to consider these things – it’s bedding down now and can indeed be very useful. I hate to use the term but we are well into Twitter 2.0 now (much as I dislike such labelling of what is a natural and obvious evolution of any system, but you’ll know what I mean!).
My feeling about this is that you and your followers come first.
If the message you are retweeting isn’t of use to them (or you don’t sincerely think it might be) then to them it will be spam.
I wouldn’t ask someone to retweet something from me if I felt they wouldn’t use their discretion to decide if it were relevant, and when people ask me to do this I usually refuse
think of your Twitter stream as a careful selection; you atevthe filter. That’s what people buy into when they follow you, they are trusting your judgement.