I can’t believe how many people still don’t understand how tweeting works. It’s a fairly simple concept… or at least I thought so. Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve… I’m writing this in hopes of helping people understand how tweeting works and to get users to tweet more effectively. Feel free to chime in and tell me I’m misinformed if you like. Honestly, maybe I don’t understand completely. Maybe I’m missing something. If you know something I don’t, or I’m off base, please let me know. I don’t mind being wrong and learning something new.
A Tweet For All To See
This one is simple. You start the tweet with plain text. No mentions at the beginning of the tweet. Because it starts with just plain text, everyone following you will see it in their timeline.
A Tweet To Specific Users
When you want to direct a tweet at someone in particular, you start with their Twitter handle. When the very first thing in the tweet is the @ symbol followed by their handle this means that they will get a notification saying they have been mentioned. The part that people don’t seem to realize is, the only people who will actually see this tweet in their timeline are the people who follow whoever you mentioned, as well as the person you directed it at.
I often see users do something like this:
@somepopularband is going to be in town! Everyone should go to the show!
Unless other users are following @somepopularband as well, they will never know they are going to be in town… and probably won’t go to the show.
Starting With A Mention, But Still For Everyone To See
When you need to start a tweet with a user’s Twitter handle and you would like everyone to see it, throw some character in front of it. The period is usually a popular choice.
Personal Pet Peeve
This one annoys me to no end… A local band from around these parts is notorious for it. They post something like this:
Check out our music video! -link to video- @someuserwhodoesntcare
The problem being, they post about 20 of these tweets, all to different people. This means I see every single one in my feed! That user that probably doesn’t want to see your music video anyways is mentioned at the end of the tweet! This is a perfect example where it should be at the beginning. They are trying to direct this at someone, so how about they actually direct it at them! This saves me, someone who is on the brink of unfollowing them, from getting spammed with 20 of the same tweet! Now that I have been spammed, I get annoyed, and because I was on the brink of unfollowing them… I unfollow them. Minus 1 in style points. Fail. There is the door. Time to go.
Anyways! Hopefully my need to vent will help people tweet more effectively…
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Users Still Don’t Understand Twitter?
Start Rant
I can’t believe how many people still don’t understand how tweeting works. It’s a fairly simple concept… or at least I thought so. Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve… I’m writing this in hopes of helping people understand how tweeting works and to get users to tweet more effectively. Feel free to chime in and tell me I’m misinformed if you like. Honestly, maybe I don’t understand completely. Maybe I’m missing something. If you know something I don’t, or I’m off base, please let me know. I don’t mind being wrong and learning something new.
A Tweet For All To See
This one is simple. You start the tweet with plain text. No mentions at the beginning of the tweet. Because it starts with just plain text, everyone following you will see it in their timeline.
A Tweet To Specific Users
When you want to direct a tweet at someone in particular, you start with their Twitter handle. When the very first thing in the tweet is the @ symbol followed by their handle this means that they will get a notification saying they have been mentioned. The part that people don’t seem to realize is, the only people who will actually see this tweet in their timeline are the people who follow whoever you mentioned, as well as the person you directed it at.
I often see users do something like this:
@somepopularband is going to be in town! Everyone should go to the show!
Unless other users are following @somepopularband as well, they will never know they are going to be in town… and probably won’t go to the show.
Starting With A Mention, But Still For Everyone To See
When you need to start a tweet with a user’s Twitter handle and you would like everyone to see it, throw some character in front of it. The period is usually a popular choice.
Personal Pet Peeve
This one annoys me to no end… A local band from around these parts is notorious for it. They post something like this:
Check out our music video! -link to video- @someuserwhodoesntcare
The problem being, they post about 20 of these tweets, all to different people. This means I see every single one in my feed! That user that probably doesn’t want to see your music video anyways is mentioned at the end of the tweet! This is a perfect example where it should be at the beginning. They are trying to direct this at someone, so how about they actually direct it at them! This saves me, someone who is on the brink of unfollowing them, from getting spammed with 20 of the same tweet! Now that I have been spammed, I get annoyed, and because I was on the brink of unfollowing them… I unfollow them. Minus 1 in style points. Fail. There is the door. Time to go.
Anyways! Hopefully my need to vent will help people tweet more effectively…
End Rant
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We are a proud supporter of FreshBooks Cloud Accounting. We invite you to give it a try! If you click their logo below you can start the free trial using our invite. From there, if you end up joining and upgrading to a paid plan, both of us get a free month out of the deal!