I know, we are all overloaded.
Blogs, Facebook news feeds, Twitter streams, LinkedIn discussions.
Friend requests, new follower alerts, updated profiles, experiences, skills....
RSS feed reader absolutely overflowing. That is until you (somewhat guiltily) proclaim 'Reader Bankruptcy' with a blanket 'mark all as read' click. Don't worry, your friends will never know that the blog posts that they spent ages poring over and parsing every last word of to make sure they were just right were subjected to burial in the mass landfill of unread clutter. At least they won't be lonely, I'll bet there are about 273 (about three days' worth) of 'Mashable' posts alongside them.
There is no time. Or not enough time anyway. So folks that blog have to realize this. So little time for the audience to read these posts, even less to comment on them, and certainly no time or tolerance to manually cut and paste an interesting post's URL into TweetDeck, or HootSuite, or whatever to actually share it with their networks (who are all likely too busy themselves).
Enter the 'Retweet' button. Most all blog posts today carry the little green thingy. A small, simple, and clever device meant to make the sharing of the post or article almost effortless. One click, a quick permission to grant, one more click - and voila, the piece is shared on Twitter, and the little 'retweet' counter ratchets up by one, like a kind of dynamic tote board of popularity (or antipathy). The retweet button is a kind of bailout for the reader, telling them effectively 'no need to work too hard to indicate you enjoyed the post by commenting', just spend 26 seconds on a few clicks and we as bloggers will get the idea.
I rarely check the traffic statistics of this blog. I have no idea how many e-mail subscribers there are (although one nice lady subscriber in Kansas is 'out of the office' a lot). But I can see that little 'retweet' button on all the posts. So sure, it is a little dismaying after posting what you think was a solid piece to see that little counter sitting on 3 or 4 after a long day waiting patiently for just a bit of attention.
So here is the little experiment for today - will writing a post with 'Please Retweet' as the title actually help the promotion and sharing of the piece? Will it matter that the piece itself has about 400 words of nonsense all leading up the big payoff - the little green button?
Just be glad I went this route, the alternative was going with a post called 'Like me on Facebook', which is a little demented, creepy, and sad.
Please retweet!
