For you Twitter beginners please read Why You Have No Twitter Followers first. That will give you the basics of Twitter and will catch you up to speed to understand this piece.
For the rest of us though, let’s get into this debate.
Over the years, I’ve had many Twitter friends, er, Tweeps?, sound off (vent) about bands Retweeting compliments. I have always stood by my act of compliment retweets for many reasons. I feel it’s finally time to lay those out and explain to my snarky, hipster musician friends why it’s not bragging (Drew!).
First off, who doesn’t love a Retweet (RT)? Seriously! I LOVE when anyone Retweets ANYTHING I tweet. Seriously. I could tweet “just pooped” and I swear to almighty that if I got 4 RTs I would throw a mini happy dance wherever I was (including Starbucks). It’s a mini victory when anyone RTs you.
Now, musicians, imagine if (insert favorite band here) RTed you? You would probably jump across the espresso bar and french kiss the barista in the green apron faster than security could yell “less tongue!”
Some of your followers consider you on that level. You may not believe it (especially if you only have a few hundred followers), but believe it. If they just saw you command the stage last night making every gal/guy fall in love with you in that club, then believe you me, you have risen to a level of celebrity in their eyes that you may never understand.
Also, I RT compliments as a big THANK YOU to that person. I could just reply to their tweet, sure, but why not make it public to ALL of my followers? And guess what? Compliments beget compliments. Without fail, every time I RT a compliment of some sort I get MORE compliments from other followers. It encourages interaction and engagement. If your followers know that you are RT friendly then they will start tweeting you things they think you are more likely to RT.
To your skeptical, non-fan followers (other musicians, biz heads, friends, family, etc) these public compliments from seemingly big fans make YOU look awesome. It raises your status level in their eyes. They now think that you are bigger than ever because you have fans willing to compliment you on Twitter.
Finally, and the biggest reason I support RTing, is in the case of something you’re trying to promote. Say you release a new YouTube video. The more people talking about the video, the more people will watch it. Plain and simple. It’s the case with everything. The reason everyone caught up on Breaking Bad before the season premiere of the final season is because everyone was talking about it. The reason everyone watched Gangnam Style is because everyone was talking about it. People want to be in the know. So every follower who tweets a compliment about your video, show, album, song, whatever make sure you RT that and always always always make sure you include the link (even if they didn’t). Your followers can ignore you screaming over and over again to watch your new video, but when “ordinary people” talk about, that’s when they’ll pay attention.
+Why You Have No Twitter Followers
+How I Made $13,544 in A Month (on Kickstarter)
+Fuck Facebook…In The Face
