GirlsTalkingTech

Twitter DM or @Reply

by Kristie Conner

I have a client who is quite inquisitive and pushes me before I start pestering   It is a good thing.  Today her question was about Twitter and how to respond to tweets.  She basically did a search of Twitter and found that she wanted to respond to some ‘tweets’.  This is the part that is brilliant.  She needed no pushing to start using Twitter in a way that will both promote her knowledge and provide a service … sharing intelligent information with interested parties.

So, how do you go about starting a conversation or sharing information (passively) with other people using Twitter.

Well, one thing that is important to do (IMHO) is to ‘follow’ people of interest and follow customers/clients.  This begins to build relationships and Twitter is about sharing not marketing.  If you are not following people it seems a bit ’snobbish’.  However, don’t follow ‘everyone’ in the hopes they’ll follow you. There are people/organizations that don’t follow anyone or very few and that is likely because they can get away with it.

Let’s say you do a search on something that you find interesting and you want to respond. What is the best way?  The best approach here is @reply. An @reply is pronounced at reply and must have the name of the Twitter user you are addressing.    @reply is a public response and will show up in public time line and could appear to your follower depending on how they have their accounts set-up.  This can start a conversation!

If you were to respond to one of my posts on Twitter this is how it would look @girlstalkintech thanks for the info! You can type it in or hover over the right-side of the tweet and you’ll have to actions available.  The little swoosh, if you click it, will automatically create the @reply.  (This is for the general Twitter interface).

Remember to keep to the 140-character limit.  I believe that the rule can be broken, but not consistently or frequently.  If someone likes what you have to say via the @reply they’ll respond and you’ll have a conversation going!

Another option is Direct Message (DM).  This is only available if the person you want to ‘converse’ with or chit-chat via Twitter is following you.  If they are following you you can send them a DM which only they will see.  Meaning, it is not going to show up on the public time line.  Let’s say you wanted to send me a DM via Twitter.  Go to Direct Messages and at the top of the screen there is the ability to select from your list of followers and send them a direct message.

If you are not sure how to interact a simple rule is this.  If it is a private conversation use a DM, but keep an open mind.  Twitter is about conversations so what you might consider a private conversation might not be private via Twitter.  Using @reply and starting conversations might just get you some new followers!

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