Retweeting vs. Favoriting – What’s the difference to you?

Hopefully you don’t need to be a marketing major to understand the difference in effect between retweeting and favoriting a tweet. In case you’ve missed it, however, any potential you have to join the collective marketing juggernaut – which constitutes the very wonder of Twitter – is lost if all you are willing to do is ❤ a tweet but not retweet it.

Favoriting a tweet is known to you and to the originator, but it doesn’t have any promotional capabilities. Of course, if you’re favoriting the tweet to revisit it later, engage, or click through to a purchase, that’s great – but it’s still only known to you and the originator.

Why not let the ripple effect work its magic? “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on and so on.” If a tweet had enough value for you to click on ❤ then why wouldn’t you share it with your followers by retweeting it?

I’ll be honest … I think it’s pretty cheesy when I read ‘tit-for-tat’ requests. You know the kind I mean. You do this for me, and I’ll do that for you. Guess what? If your stuff has value, I’d retweet it even if I find you to be cheap with your retweets. I’ll think you’re a dick, but if you’ve got content that I believe to be value-added for MY followers, then I’m going to share it for THEIR benefit. The fact that it also benefits YOUR cheap-with-retweets self is my gift to you. Maybe you should also #ShareTheLove. Sayin’!

Please comment on the difference for you. I would really like to know. For me it’s simple. I favorite something that I don’t have time to fully assimilate now, and I retweet others’ content when it gave me a chuckle or touched me in some way. More importantly, I retweet so that hopefully my sharing is another ripple that echoes the creativity of the originator to a wider audience.

Really!! You can help a creative #tweep with a simple click. So … why wouldn’t you?