What Is a Retweet or RT?

When you tweet on Twitter sometimes people want to add their own tweet, Retweet or Reply, in response to what you shared. (Retweet or RT are the same thing.) Maybe they like what you said. Or they just want to support you. Or even kiss up a bit 🙂

And so they create a new response tweet by either clicking on the Reply or Retweet icon. This way they can get their voice heard too — or just share your tweet with their followers. (They can also simply LIKE your tweet by clicking on the heart.)

How to Retweet or RT or Reply

Reply (found below the original tweet all the way to the left) automatically puts in the account name (starting with an @ sign) of the person who wrote the original tweet. And now you can you add whatever you want to say.

You can then send your tweet by clicking Reply. Sometimes the person acknowledges this with a LIKE. Or they may add their own reply.

FYI: You can find people who Retweet (RT) you by clicking on Notifications all the way to the left of the page. There is a little bell icon next to it, and if there has been action on your original tweet (or mentioned your Twitter handle at all), you’ll see a number above Notifications.

About retweeting

A person can also click on Retweet (found below the original tweet, second from the left). You can choose to RT it as is, or decide to add a comment along with the retweet. And if someone RTs you, don’t forget to thank them with a Reply or a LIKE.

Just be aware that sometimes when you RT someone with a comment, the new tweet does not carry the original picture. You can remedy this by going to the original article, tweeting a link to that with your comment, and mentioning where you got it to be polite. I usually use “via” and then their @ Twitter handle.

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