What is a manual retweet on twitter

And how do you properly repost on Instagram and Twitter in particular? Posting your original brand content on social media nowadays is simply not enough.

Thankfully, there are a myriad of benefits reposting on social media can bring to your business. This will help you build your business or personal brand on social media and have a dedicated and loyal group of followers. Another major benefit to reposting content is that your brand will gain more visibility on social media. Learn how to create an awesome content strategy by reading our Content Marketing Strategy Guide.

Lastly but not least importantly, always repost user-generated content where a mention of your brand or product is included. Before the automatic retweet button was implemented, Twitter users were reposting tweets manually. This can still be done, but most people now prefer to retweet automatically, by using the built-in retweet button. The last example includes a comment before the manual retweet from the retweeter who reacts and replies to the original tweet.

The manual retweet trend was big in Twitter's early days, but it's now used less often. Twitter now gives you the option to retweet someone else's tweet by featuring their entire tweet including profile photo, Twitter handle, original tweet text, and all by embedding it into your Twitter profile stream.

A glance at any tweet in your stream should show a Retweet link or button represented by an icon with two arrows—both on the web and the Twitter mobile apps. That retweet button is there, so you don't have to manually retweet another user's tweet.

This explains why you might see other profile photos and Twitter users show up in your stream that you don't follow. The people you follow are retweeting other tweets from other users, but they're not doing it manually by creating a new tweet and typing 'RT' in front of it.

Some users frown upon manual retweets because even though they include the original tweeter's Twitter handle, the user who manually retweeted them gets all the favorites, interactions, and additional retweets. BuzzFeed published an informative article on the matter , which explains the art of Twitter retweet etiquette.

As shown in the third manual retweet example above, manual retweets are useful when one user wants to react and reply to another user's tweet as they retweet it. Although this wasn't always possible in Twitter's regular retweet function, updated versions of Twitter now allow an additional comment in the retweet. When you click or tap the retweet button on any tweet, the tweet appears over your screen in a box with a comment field above it. Doing so is preferable to manual retweeting because you can use characters in your comment while retweeting another user's tweet fully.

The retweeted tweet is attached to your comment and appears embedded in your feed. You might see 'MT' instead of 'RT' in a manual tweet. MT stands for a modified tweet. Subtweeting is a less popular trend on Twitter that involves mentioning other people or users without their knowledge. To stop seeing retweets from a specific account, tap that account's profile image, tap the three dots , and select Turn off Retweets.

To delete retweets, go to your profile and find the retweeted post. While no method will guarantee an increase in retweets, there are some practices to follow that improve your chances of going viral on Twitter. For instance, focus on attracting a genuine following using consistent, high-quality content.

Before this feature existed, users had to do what's called a "manual retweet," where they'd cram both the original tweet or a modified version and any commentary into the character limit. Now, users can embed that original tweet within their own message and then comment on it in up to characters. Now, some of you may have been avoiding this new option. Hey, I get it -- we're all busy, and skipping straight to an old-school retweet is fast and convenient.

And sometimes, that's totally OK. But if you're never taking advantage of the "add a comment" feature, then y ou're missing out the opportunity to add value to the conversion. Yes, Twitter's "retweet with comment" feature allows you to retweet with a comment up to a whopping characters. But there is another way to retweet with a comment, although it won't allow your comment to be as many characters. It's called the manual retweet, and it looks something like this: Yes, it is!

RT username: The sky is blue. In this step, you'll also want to delete the name of the user you're retweeting, add a RT in front of their username and a colon after their username, and delete any weird spacing.

In other words, change this:. In this case, you'll need to manually copy and paste any link URLs from the original tweet into your new one. Now we'll compare retweeting the old-fashioned way, which we'll refer to here as "auto retweeting," versus retweeting with a comment.

How does retweeting with a comment work? What are the advantages and disadvantages of one versus the other? Then, we'll go over the original manual retweet and recap why it's still important, how to do it, and how to decide when it's your best choice. Before we get into the nitty gritty, first thing's first: You've got to find a tweet worth retweeting. For me, it's all about my favorite Orange is the New Black actress Uzo Aduba running this year's Boston Marathon and supporting cancer research.

I loved her before, but I love her even more wanting to travel to Boston for such a noble cause -- plus, it's fun to think she'll be around my home city Anyhow, ahem. Back to business. Once you've found a tweet to retweet, the fun starts. Will you auto retweet or retweet with a comment?

The first step's the same for both: Click the retweet icon at the bottom of the tweet -- you know, the one that looks like a recycle icon.

A window will pop up that looks something like this:. Now, it's time to decide whether you want to add a comment to your retweet or not. Let's take a look at what both options look like and how to do them. An auto retweet is when you retweet without adding a comment. So if you were to skip adding a comment and simply click the retweet button on the bottom right, the resulting retweet will look like this:.

The addition of retweeting with a comment has not changed how these automatic retweet work, so if you dig using them, you can expect things to work as they always have. On the other hand, if you take advantage of the "add a comment" field, the resulting tweet will look like this:. Adding that tidbit at the comment allows my followers to gain a better understanding about why I retweeted in the first place.

Note, though, that my followers are no longer able to click directly on the link that's within that original tweet. It's not blue and visibly hyperlinked anymore. Huffington Post 's profile picture is also gone. But, rest assured, if they click anywhere in that box containing the original tweet, they'll be taken back to the original tweet itself. From there, they can click on any URL, hashtag, or username links that the original tweet contains.

Still, without the visual cue that they can click on like blue text that's clearly hyperlinked , they might be less likely to engage with that original tweet. I expect it's going to take people a while to get familiar with this distintion, and you may notice less engagement in the meantime.

I'll also be a little self-critical here: My comment copy was a bit redundant, given how the final retweet appears. I would have done well to just put a period after the word "Boston" and let people see the marathon and the cause mentioned in the original tweet.