How to Solicit Twitter Tweets

Fitting a message into 140 characters is both rewarding and challenging. Composing your thoughts in one or two sentences can be difficult, but in return for an interesting tweet, others will share your message with the world through "retweeting," or they may respond with a tweet of their own. Getting people to tweet and retweet doesn't happen right away, so put some basic principles into practice to encourage them.

Instructions

1. Make your tweet interesting, informative and easy to understand. This is the cardinal rule of soliciting tweets and retweets -- if you tweet boring messages, no one will respond.

2. Add "Please RT" or "Plz RT" to the end of a tweet to ask your followers to retweet it.

3. Click "Message" above a Twitter follower's user name, and send a direct message asking her to tweet or retweet. You can only send direct messages to people who follow you.

4. Send an @reply or @mention to another user asking him to tweet or retweet a message. This means including the person's Twitter user name in your tweet. For example, "Hi, @friendsusername. Please RT Happy birthday to Liz!" Some celebrities will retweet on request if it's for a good cause, such as a charity.

5. Click "Follow" on a profile to follow back anyone who follows you. This is the first step toward building a Twitter friendship.

6. Interact with other users frequently by sending @replies, making @mentions and retweeting their messages. The more you build a good relationship with other tweeters, the more likely they are to reward you by retweeting your messages.

7. Add hashtags to the end of a tweet. These words and phrases help tweeters identify the subject of your message. If you use a hashtag such as #Obama, #BigBrother or #breakingnews, for example, someone finding your tweet may retweet it if it interests them.

Tips & Warnings

• If someone ignores your request for a retweet, don't keep requesting it. Other users will see excessive requests as spam and may block you.