How to See Who RTd Your Content

One of the downfalls to using a 3rd party dashboard as your everyday access point for Twitter is that it’s not always easy to see who RTd your content. If they’ve tagged @anitakirkbride then of course I’m going to see it pop up as a mention, but if they haven’t, it’s a little harder.

Twitter gives you the option to receive an email every time someone retweets you. I do get those, but I find it cumbersome to translate a bunch of e-mails into thank yous. Twitter also shows you very easily who has RTd your post. Usually, if I have many people to thank, I will go straight to Twitter to find the tweet.

Let’s say you want to know all the people who retweeted this update:

Embeddable Tweets–What, Why and How bit.ly/XTHruY on the Twirp Communications blog today.

— Anita Kirkbride (@anitakirkbride) January 22, 2013

All you have to do is open the tweet details by clicking on the main tweet, so that it looks like this:

This window tells you how many times it was retweeted and shows the avatars of some of the retweeters on the right. If it’s a small enough number they may all be represented there, but you might not know their account names to thank them. Now you click on the number of retweets and you get a list of them all:

Not only do you have a quick list of who’s interested in your content, but you can see whether you are following them and perhaps their name or organization. To quickly thank them all, open a second tab/window for Twitter and include them all in one post.

The bigger question here is, “Should you thank everyone who RTs your content?” I know many tweeters who don’t thank me when I RT their content, but I also know many who do. I don’t thank people for RTing everything, but if it’s your own original content or pithy thought, then I think you should try to thank those who share. What do you think?