Retweet for credibility (It helped when Scoble and Newmark passed along my story…)

Mashable put together a nice article with some tips for managing your brand identity on the web. The most important advice in my mind was…

Let someone else say it

This was especially helpful:

[Starbucks] Product Manager Brad Nelson is often the genius behind the company’s online and social media initiatives, he’s also the primary person behind the brand’s very popular Twitter account. Much of his day-to-day responsibilities involve online brand management, and as such he’s learned that sometimes the best way to say something on the social web is to, “have someone else say it.”

Nelson advises other brands to take the same course of action. “If you can find a tweet, photo or blog post that says what you’re trying to say then use that instead of writing it yourself. It does a couple of great things. Your readers will see it as an external validator, so they’ll be more likely to respond than they would if it was a billboard on the side of the road. It also makes the original author happy. Everyone wants to see their content get exposure.”

In fact, Nelson says that he tries to “find things to retweet every day.”

Find something to retweet every day

Of course retweeting is where you find something someone said on Twitter, and pass it along to the people following you.

It’s so powerful because you’re letting someone else do the talking. It’s more credible.

My retweeting opportunity

A few weeks ago, my story on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was retweeted by Craig and Robert Scoble – some of the most powerful people in technology.

Retweeting their retweets served this function. If Newmark and Scoble liked the story, others probably will as well.

And they did – I received hundreds of new readers from this single tweet.

So today – and every day – go out there and try to find something to retweet.