When we tweet something, a thought, a piece of information, we expect two things: starting a few conversations and getting retweets. Both are valuable, but while the first goal implies our community, the retweet part implies reaching out to more people and getting more views and opinions on what we have just sent into the Twitterverse.

So saying retweets are important is a bit of an understatement. And while we all try to read tips and tricks and find new strategies to have more retweets, I thought a road back to the basics of it all might help. And I asked myself: why do people retweet? And here’s a list of reasons I found:

• they find the tweet funny
• they’ve been through a similar situation – positive or negative. I should add here that when it’s a negative review, they tend to retweet more, compared to positive reviews of products and services
• they are interested in the topic and their community shares the interest
• they find your take on the matter unique and intriguing
• they are your raving supporters and like to promote your work
• they find it easier to add a quick comment to the retweet than post a longer comment on your blog
• they return favors

And now let’s get the comment-party started! What about you? Why do you retweet? Why do you think your followers retweet your articles and news?

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While browsing through my LinkedIn account, I just noticed this question about apps that allow you to schedule tweets. Some of the answers stated no one should ever schedule tweets, as it is spammy. Automation is bad, don’t do it. And I started wondering. Is it really spam? Or is it just a way to make work easier and give your followers a break? And the answer is, like always, it depends

I should first say I manage a few Twitter accounts. On some I schedule tweets, on others I don’t. On those who are there to provide news on a certain topic, I do schedule tweets. I usually find the news all at once and just sending them all out at ones is actually more spammy to some users than scheduling them throughout the day. That does not mean I ignore the conversation. I check the stream every couple of hours, check what others are saying, retweet, reply, thank people for their comments and retweets.

When it comes to blog post, a lot of what I write is scheduled. And when I set the publishing time and date, I also set the tweet. Basically because I tend to get caught up and I might forget. I do check it, I do interact, as I said before. And I really don’t think programming tweets is a form of spam.

When all your tweets are programmed and you are never there to talk, reply or answer questions, it is definitely spam. You are there to broadcast more or less forcefully whatever you please and you really don’t care what your followers have to say. But from that to saying any form of automation and of rendering your work fast and effective is spam is a long road to be traveled.

What bout you? Do you schedule tweets? Do you think it’s spam when others do it? Should we ban all automation, good or bad from social media? I say not, yet it all needs to be approached with great care. And over to you…

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There’s been so much virtual ink spilled on building relationships on social media sites that one needs to be blind not to run across one article giving a few tips on the matter. Yet some still try their own obnoxious techniques that don’t work anyway.

One trend that I’ve recently notices and got an “oh, really?” from me was the following: add a friend, wait a bit for them to follow back and if they don’t, send them a message saying you’ll unfriend them if you’re unwilling to return the favor. Now how does that threat work? Simply put, it doesn’t.

The reason to friend or follow anyone is that you somehow find them interesting enough. If you want to get their attention, start a conversation with them, ask the right questions to get their attention and make them feel valued and interesting. They then might return the favor.

But if you act like and impatient, self-absorbed nuisance,  they will at best ignore you. Or choose to block you all together or report you. Why risk that when you can spend 5 minutes forgetting about what you want and think of what other people need. They will definitely respond in a much more pleasant manner than they would in the case of virtual blackmail!

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Happy New Year! Hope you’ve had a great celebrating the arrival of 2010. And now that it’s here and we’ll soon be back to tasks and plans to make it a great business year, what better way to start that with trends and events predicted for 2010? I’ve gathered a list of PR and communication forecasts published at the end of December. The posts are listed as they appeared in my reader and I am sure you can add your collection of predictions to it

2010 Predictions for Communications
2010 PR Predictions: More Social Media Blunders
2010 PR Predictions: Growth Returns, M&A Activity Increases
PR Trends in 2010: The Future of PR
2010 PR Predictions: A New Player Will Emerge To Challenge Facebook Supremacy
2010 PR Predictions: Ketchum Edition
PR Trends 2010: Real Time Search Speeds up the News
2010 PR Predictions: Crisis Firms Will Adopt ‘Pay-By-Performance Model’
Euro RSCG’s Salzman on 2010 Trends: ‘Co-Creating the News’
PR Trends 2010: Branded Content
2010 Predictions: ‘The Days of Press Hits To Justify the PR Budget Are Over’
PR Trend 2010: The Death of Print

What do you think? Who has better chances of getting it right? What are your own predictions for the new year?

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Alex Cristache, the mastermind behind Blogsessive.com and the QBKL Media design studio, has just release a free PDF eboook called “Corporate Blogging Guide”. This comprehensive collection of useful tips and back to the basic explanations of the whole blogging process is meant to help companies assess their need of a blog, draw some goals, come up with a blogging strategy, choose the best available tool and start reaching out to the blogging community.

All you have to do to get this business blogging ebook is to subscribe for free to Blogsessive’s RSS feed and you’ll spot the download link at the end of each article in the feed. If you’re already a Blogsessive RSS subscriber, you only need to click the link, it’s already there

Yours truly played a little but significant part in the process of getting the Corporate Blogging Guide published, meaning I helped Alex translate and did a bit of editing as well. So download it, read it and let Alex and I know what you think Oh, and happy blogging!

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