Lesson: Social Media & Branding with Crystal Lee

Step #8 Retweeting: What posts and tweets do you retweet and why?

There are a lot of things I retweet. I retweet links, quotes, I retweet "You go girls," "Atta girls" from other people celebrating other girls who had just won something. I'm pretty liberal about it because I think that as the Miss California organization we are such a subculture at the moment that we're constantly looking for content, and it's not like we're the Miss Rodeo show where there's even less content. We do have access to a wide network of people who are always doing great things and we have lots of sponsors in different areas.

So we have a tanning sponsor, makeup sponsor, hair, fashion, walking, speaking, all of those things, and so we touch on a wide periphery of businesses. I always try to retweet our sponsors. In a way that strokes them to feel happy that they support us because social media is another way where we can get their brand out, too. It's like that coattail effect. They've supported us. I didn't have to pay for tanning before Miss America. In exchange, I want all of the young women who follow us to know about their business as a source for tanning. So it's kind of a tit for tat.

With retweeting other people who aren't sponsors, that's a great way to, it's a free way to get that follower excited because people find it an honor to be retweeted. It's as if I went to President Obama's campaign rally and I said, "You are the best, President Obama." He goes, "Yes, she just said I'm the best." I would feel so glowing after that because I felt like I was heard. I felt like President Obama heard me. Out of all the people in the rally, he heard me and that he said the same thing that I said to him. So people get sensitive when they're ignored online just like they're proud when they're heard, and retweeting is a good way to get people excited that they said something good.

Well known people tend to have people doing their social media for them, and because they're professionals they tend to have really good tweets and the tweets can be short, they can be snarky, they can be clever, they can be witty, but tweets that are a combination of all four of those factors tend to be retweeted often because it's an amen from the crowds of thousands of people who follow that person. It's important to retweet them if you think that what they said is so good that you would've said it yourself, otherwise I think you get more bang for your buck retweeting someone who is lesser known because this person doesn't have that many followers. That person probably feels really good when they're retweeted. So why not make that one person super-happy and extra-loyal to your brand after that moment. So retweeting is a free way to up the customer engagement, whereas a famous person probably won't even see that.