The Difference Between a Retweet and a Reply on Twitter

4
May 2017

The Difference Between a Retweet and a Reply on TwitterRetweets and replies are essentially the meat and potatoes of Twitter, but there are a few key differences between the two that you might not know. By retweeting or replying to other Twitter users, you are interacting with their content by adding in your own two cents. This makes your interactions both personal and strategic when promoting your business. During your next Twitter networking session, be careful not to mix up these answers.

Reply

When replying to a tweet, you are sending a comment back to the original Twitter user, alerting them that you saw their tweet and have something to say in response. The best thing about a Twitter reply, you can send them to anyone! Whether the user has 100 followers or 100,000, Twitter doesn’t care. By hitting the reply button you can comment back to the user in seconds. There are two ways to send a reply on Twitter. You can reply to an individual tweet by selecting the reply button, or you can easily create a new tweet starting with @ and the user’s Twitter name. But remember, if you want anyone else to see your reply, you need to put a period before the username to make the post public.

Retweet

Retweets are a beautiful gift given by Twitter! They allow you to share other user’s tweets with your audience and allows others to share your tweets with theirs. The best part? The tweet is still attached to the original user’s account, so credit is always given where credit is due. Retweets can be used to network with other users online and can give your Twitter presence a huge boost when you are retweeted by a user with a big following.

Quote Tweet

When two worlds collide, you get quote tweets. This is a helpful tool when you want to share someone’s content but still add in some extra commentary. By posting a quote retweet, you are sharing the original tweet, but you also have the ability to reply to the user and ask a question or answer back to their post. For those times that you just want to do it all, quote tweeting is the way to go.

While it may seem simple, there’s a lot to discuss when it comes to the power of a reply vs. a retweet. But lucky for you, Twitter gives you plenty of options! When it comes to the difference, it’s pretty simple; it’s all about what you’re looking to do with it. Now that we’ve sorted this out, how about we help you with another social media curiosity? One frequent question we get is all about the difference between a like and a follow on Facebook. Still confused? Take a look at our blog post on that topic here.

 

megaphoneThere are currently 500 million tweets per day. Are you standing out in those tweets?

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