Manual Retweets on Twitter

Originally posted by Jared at Manual Retweets on Twitter on January 15, 2013.

Last night in class everyone was asked to try “automatic” retweeting (using the official retweet link) and “manual” retweeting (using “RT”).

Afterwards I noticed that there was a little bit of confusion about how to write a manual retweet. Here’s an example that should help.

Let’s say I send out this tweet:

The elephants march at midnight.

Now, you think this is an amazingly profound message and you want to pass it on to your followers. You also want to add your own note:

But the giraffes will wait until dawn.

Let’s put your manual retweet together. First, you need the original message. You can copy this from my tweet.

The elephants march at midnight.

Then, before the message, you type “RT” and my Twitter handle. Like this:

RT @autoblot The elephants march at midnight.

Finally, you add your part of the message, before the “RT”:

But the giraffes will wait until dawn. RT @autoblot The elephants march at midnight.

Now you can send it off. People will know that the first part of the tweet (about the giraffes) is your response to the original tweet, and that the original tweet was posted by “@autoblot”.

Make sense? Let me know if you have any questions or other suggestions in the comments.