The Power of Retweets and @Replies

Without question, Twitter is one of the most powerful marketing tools at the disposal of artists. If you’re familiar with Twitter, you likely already know that your own tweets can be used to promote your music-related activities to your followers. You should also know that tweeting about your non music-related activities, as well as providing your followers with frequent photo and video content via Twitpic and Twiddeo, strengthens the artist/fan relationship by letting your fans get to know you on a personal level. But there are two Twitter features whose marketing muscle is often overlooked by the site’s users and whose importance became undeniably clear to me over the last few weeks: retweets and @replies

I recently started following Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) and Christine Kirk (@luxuryprgal) on Twitter. On Oscar Night, the power of the retweet was perfectly exemplified when Christine used Twitter to pose a simple question. This question ended up being retweeted by Ryan Seacrest. The unravelling of events went a little something like this:

luxuryprgal (9:52 PM): Anyone going to any good Oscar parties? #oscars

RyanSeacrest (10:03 PM): RT @luxuryprgal Anyone going to any good Oscar parties? #oscars

luxuryprgal (10:05 PM): Have added 20-plus followers since I began Tweeting about the Oscars - thank you to all!! #oscars

luxuryprgal (10:15 PM): Just added 27 additional followers in the last 12 minutes - was it something I said?? Thank you!!

luxuryprgal (10:22 PM): @RyanSeacrest Thanks for the RT!

luxuryprgal (10:27 PM): The power of Twitter is UNREAL!! @RyanSeacrest RT’d me and I’ve added over 100 followers in a matter of minutes.

Christine works in PR with the Los Angeles-based Murphy O’Brien, a top public relations agency that has worked extensively with Ryan’s radio show. Because she and Ryan follow each other on Twitter, she speculates that the retweet simply came as a result of Ryan seeing her initial tweet in his timeline and then deciding to retweet it.

Obviously, not everyone can expect to get retweeted by Ryan Seacrest. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start incorporating retweets into your marketing efforts; even if the people who retweet you don’t have the massive follower count that Ryan Seacrest has, getting enough of them to take action can still make an impact. 

To get started, I highly recommend you read these great tips from the always insightful Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) on how to get retweeted: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/31338

Many of the tips in the article suggest you tweet about subjects that don’t have anything to do with yourself (other than the fact that you may find such subjects interesting). You should definitely pay attention to these tips as they’re all very effective ways to get retweeted. However, your Twitter username would be the only piece of information contained in the resulting retweets that would be directly related to you. This would not be a bad thing; it’s great for your username to get promoted. It can lead to people visiting your Twitter profile page where they can find a link to your site and learn more about you. But it’s worth mentioning that artists should also attempt to get tweets about their music-related activities retweeted. This would pack a double marketing punch; your Twitter username and your musical activity would get promoted in the retweet. How can you make this happen? By asking for you fans’ help. Remember, your fans want to see you succeed. Most would be more than happy to help you spread the word via Twitter. Just make sure you don’t go overboard and let the number of retweet requests you issue become an annoyance. Only ask your fans to retweet important news. Album releases, the fact that you uploaded a new video on Youtube, and tour date announcements are all subjects that would deserve retweet requests.

Keeping with the celebrity theme of this entry, it was the recent Twitter feud between Lily Allen (@lilyroseallen) and Perez Hilton (@perezhilton) that got me thinking about another Twitter feature whose marketing muscle is often overlooked: the @reply

Allen and Hilton essentially got into a “fight” (it was really more like teasing than fighting) over Twitter and used the site’s @reply feature as their method of communication. More details on the feud can be found here: www.tinyurl.com/c3rrv8

As you can see from following the link, the exposure that resulted from two celebrities getting into a Twitter feud actually went beyond Twitter and came in the form of media coverage. However, the @replies that Allen and Hilton were sending back and forth to each other also created awareness for the songstress and the celebrity blogger on Twitter itself; it helped to expose each to the other’s followers.

@Replies are arguably not quite as effective as retweets are when it comes to creating awareness on Twitter. This is because @replies don’t appear in users’ timelines unless the @replies are directed at the users (or unless there is a conversation happening between two people a user is following). Even so, @replies are still public and can therefore lead to a considerable number of people discovering you and your Twitter page. To that end, I felt it necessary to include them in this discussion.

While I may be wrong, it does not appear that anyone else has made a list of tips on how to generate @replies on Twitter. Therefore, I decided to make a list of my own to share with you:

How to Generate @Replies

1) Play games with your followers.

John Mayer (@johncmayer) has been making great use of this clever @reply-generating strategy. While I encourage you to be creative and come up with your own games to play, here is a tweet he posted that shows the tactic at work:

johncmayer: Arrite, new game! I give a category, and then the first letter of each word, you fill it in. For example: SONG “GTYMA” by RW feat. H the SD

2) Use Twitter to hold contests that encourage @replies.

There are a number of ways that this idea could be implemented. To offer one example, you could post a tweet that states something along the lines of “First 10 followers who @reply to this win X”.

3) Ask questions.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. A lot of people include links to new songs in their tweets and ask their followers whether they think the songs are “hot” or “not”. Some artists ask their followers what they think a good title for a future song would be. The question possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

4) Answer questions.

When your followers/fans ask you questions in the form of @replies, try your best to answer as many as possible. If you become known as someone who takes the time to answer questions, more people will start asking them. This will result in more @replies being directed at you. Furthermore, the people whose questions you answer may send you additional @replies to thank you for answering and/or to comment on your answers.

5) Engage in conversations with your followers that stem from THEIR tweets.

You don’t have to wait for your followers to ask you questions in order to converse with them; you can be the one who takes the first step. Keep an eye on their updates. When someone tweets about something that would make sense for you to comment on or ask a question about, send them an @reply. They will likely send you an @reply back (especially if you asked them a question). As with retweet requests, just make sure you don’t go overboard and become an annoyance. Only comment on tweets and ask questions if you have something that’s really worth saying or asking. Artists who follow their fans back will be able to make particularly good use of this tactic.

6) Include hashtags in your tweets.

Do this when tweeting about topics that a significant number of people are likely to be searching for. Hashtags are essentially the Twitter equivalent of regular tags on sites like Youtube. They make your tweets searchable on www.search.twitter.com and on sites like www.hashtags.org and www.twemes.com (for your hashtags to be tracked by www.hashtags.org, you must first opt-in by following @hashtags on Twitter). This can result in a lot of people (beyond your followers) seeing your tweets and, thus, can lead to more @replies. It can also lead to more retweets and can help you attract more followers. To include a hashtag in your tweet, simply prefix a word that is related to the topic you’re tweeting about with a hash symbol. For example, if you’re tweeting about American Idol, your tweet might look like this: “What did you think of Kris Allen? #idol”

With all this talk about getting retweeted and generating @replies, it’s important that you always remember two of the main reasons that fans want to follow their favourite artists on Twitter: to keep up-to-date with the artists’ activities and to get to know each artist on a more personal level. While you should attempt to get retweeted and generate @replies, it should also be noted that allowing the time you spend doing so to overtake the time you spend providing fans with the content they really want would cause more harm than good. This applies more to trying to get retweeted than it does to trying to generate @replies (most of the @reply-generating tactics I mentioned would be fun and engaging for fans and/or would let them get to know you on a personal level).

After absorbing everything you’ve read leading up to this point, you have probably had two realizations:

a) Retweets and @replies are often overlooked, but are potentially very powerful marketing tools.

b) I follow a lot of celebrities on Twitter.  :)

Take what you’ve learned regarding the former and start applying it to your own marketing efforts today.

And remember, for the latest music industry news and advice, you can follow ArtistsHouse on Twitter here: @artistshouse

… and I’m @KatieOHalloran on Twitter (you didn’t expect me to write an entire entry on Twitter and not include a shameless plug for my Twitter page, did you?)

On a final note, if anyone has any other tips on getting retweeted or on generating @replies, please post a comment and share them!

*** UPDATE: If you liked this post, it would be greatly appreciated if you could tweet a link to it. Let’s see how much traffic we can direct to the ArtistsHouse blog!