Power Twitter users should know all about retweeting, but it’s a feature I find new users don’t ever use because they don’t even know about it. Retweeting is taking someone’s message and reposting it in your own Twitter stream giving recognition to the original user. It’s kind of like a footnote in a book or giving reference to your sources. The purpose of doing this is you think someone else has a good idea and you should share it with your own community. It’s always a good idea to give credit where credit is due.

You’ll want to make efficient use of retweeting. If you were to retweet everything then nothing you tweet is probably important even if you think everything you tweet is beneficial to your followers. You’ll want to tweet interesting content that will provide some use to your followers. It will also help you build better relationships with people because it will connect you with those you have retweeting. It’s been said that those users that get retweeted the most are those that have the most influence on Twitter. Retweeting is the highest form of flattery on Twitter. Retweeting can bring valuable information to your followers as long as you use it correctly. If you don’t abuse the privilege it can bring quality and value to you as a Twitter users.

So now that you have the background about retweeting you’re probably wondering how it’s done. Here are some examples:

• RT @user original message
• RT: @user: original message
• Retweet @user original message
• via @user original message

The @ sign is common syntax to refer to a person on twitter. The retweet syntax can also be anywhere in the message. I think most people put it at the beginning of the message and the client I use (EventBox) uses the syntax in the first example. I hope this helps you build better Twitter relationships. See you on Twitter.