One common stage 2 idea is that you can reach different people in different time zones by setting up a repeated tweet every few hours.

Fact is, you will reach more people with that specific tweet, and if you are tweeting just the one tweet it’s likely that almost no one will notice.

Unfortunatly, most of the tweeps using this technique fail to add any real valud beyond the self promotional tweets. So while I would never say that you should not repeat a tweet (after all, or mantra is NO RULES) I do regually caution against having a profile page that is full of “come and look at me” type tweets

@GuyKawasaki wrote a piece today showing his results when he repeated a tweet:

You would think that the skies would open up, and I’d get struck by
lightning by the Twitter gods. Think again. In the case of repeating a
tweet four times in thirty-two hours, there was a big spike for the
first tweet, but the next three still yielded very good results. In
total, the four posts resulted in 5,059 clickthroughs in tranches of
1,481, 1,415, 1,208, and 955; note, however, I looked at the server log
and approximately 20% of these clickthroughs are bots. 700 people
signed up for this service, by the way, because of my four tweets.

As suspected, more people saw the tweet each time it went out and the total clicks went way up.

What Guy left out was that he has a reputation for saying very smart things and engaging in real conversations with many tweeps.

What I prefer to see is self promotion with variety. I often use the same URL in a dozen or more tweets in a single day, for instance, the link to my Twitter radio show (http://TwitCastRadio.com). However, I use the link in unique tweets, mostly in answer to people asking me a question.

Sometimes, I’ll promote an upcoming event or show with several hints about the show. One tweet will have the show announcement, another will thank the guest I’ve booked, yet another will mention what we will cover on the show.

What about RT (ReTweets)?

Use the same ideas for tweets I see from those I follow, I often send out their message to my tweet stream. I’ll use the lazy RT button if that is available in the software client I’m using that day, sometimes I think what was written was perfect. But usually, I try to add value with a comment, or by writing my own tweet. Other times, I’ll see a link, read a post and end up with a blog post of my own (as happened today with this post.. thanks to @24k for the link)

It’s only 140 characters.. be creative and write more about your subject. Anyone seeing more than one will appreciate the details and you get a new batch of readers each time. When you get to have hundreds of thousands of followers, you can repeat without worry. Until then, give us unique valuable content whenever you can.

For me, great content is always great content. How about you?

Warren Whitlock
Co-Author of “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online”, speaker, social media marketing strategist, and publisher.
Read more at http://WarrenWhitlock.com

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