Pardon me if I retweet myself...

This is the first in a series of guest blog posts by IntraLinks’ collaborators, partners, and vendors. Text100 is a boutique public relations firm and became IntraLinks’ global agency in August 2009.

Loads of people – nearly 20 million so far – are tweeting away including executives at well known companies, media personalities, high profile celebrities and even regular folks like, say, Joe the Plumber. It’s a diverse and growing crowd on Twitter. But you’ve heard that story already. What’s unfolding still is how the mainstream invasion of microblogging (in industry parlance) continues to present businesses with exciting opportunities but also new and sometimes nuanced challenges. One such challenge is balancing the need to make content as visible as possible with etiquette, particularly in a digital world where people are inundated with information and can turn you off with a single “unfollow” click.

“How do I make my content more shareable?” “At what time of day are my tweets more likely to be read?” “Can I re-tweet myself?” These are the types of questions we often field from clients. In search of answers, our team at Text 100 is constantly examining statistics and data from our official corporate feed, @text100, and others to help companies such as IntraLinks understand how to optimize content sharing on Twitter.

Here’s an example: Our CEO, Aedhmar Hynes, recently wrote an article for PRSA’s Public Relations Strategist where she assessed the changing value of marketing, advertising and PR on brands in difficult economic environment. As part of our effort to capitalize on this placement, the team tested the “art of the repeat tweet” theory (credit to Guy Kawasaki for objectively clarifying the difference between spam and sensible content distribution).

Keep in mind that since the vast majority of Twitter users check their tweet streams perhaps once or twice a day, the odds that they’ll see every tweet from the people they follow are slim to none. And therein lies the basic premise behind the need for repeating or retweeting your own content.

In addition, recent research shows that Tuesday is the most popular day for Twitter activity, accounting for 15.7% of total activity and the most Twitter activity happens from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (EST). With this in mind, we decided to spread tweets around different times and different days. Using HootSuite, our tool for managing Text 100’s Twitter feed, we scheduled multiple tweets to post over a few days and for different time zones, while also having Text 100 colleagues retweet the link.

One day after posting, it had become the most clicked @text100 tweet to date, including a retweet from the Council of PR Firms feed @CouncilPRFirms, which has a highly focused audience of 3,000+ followers. Most importantly, the click through rates for each of the multiple posts was remarkably consistent. For the sake of example, think of the execution as four separate posts, each accounting for roughly 25% of the total volume of click throughs.

That’s not to suggest you can simply keep sharing the same thing over and over, but careful monitoring, understanding of usage patterns and new tools can help you take advantage of strategic retweeting. Brands should not be afraid to re-share something they’ve tweeted, even if that simply means saying it different ways at different times. The main lesson here is companies such as IntraLinks not only need to integrate a Twitter strategy into everything from news announcements to marketing campaigns, but also be more creative than ever to successfully expand their reach through platforms like Twitter.

Lastly, make an earnest effort to try and respond to ALL retweets and/or replies to your company’s posts, sharing an additional piece of commentary or relevant content where appropriate. This is an easy, effective way to nurture potentially beneficial relationships with customers, media, analysts or even potential business partners. In instances where extra “added value” seems like overkill, a “thanks for the RT” at minimum will show appreciation and encourage future interaction.