How to Reply on Twitter

To reply to a tweet, start the tweet with the user’s name, like this:

@BrentO me too! I hate it when that happens.

Your tweet will show up on that user’s Mentions (Replies) list even if they’re not following you.  This helps those of us who don’t follow everybody back, like me.  I have thousands of followers, but I can’t follow them all back – my Twitter screen would look like a noisy bar full of people!  Instead, I can just follow the people I interact with the most, and then if somebody happens to mention my name, I’ll still know about it even if I’m not following them.

You only see conversations when you’re following everyone involved.  If you’re following me, and I’m carrying on a conversation with @Wendy_Dance, you won’t see my messages to her unless you’re following both me AND Wendy.  If you want to reply to others but still make sure everyone sees it (not just that one person), start your tweet with something other than their name.  The most common trick is to use a period, like this:

“. @SQLAgentMan yes, I too think Journey is the most underrated band ever. Who’s with us?”

That way, everyone who’s following me will see what I said, even if they don’t follow @SQLAgentMan.  It’s a way for me to bring more people into the conversation.

Twitter conversations can be hard to follow because you can’t easily match up all the parts of one conversation.  You can’t easily see a threaded view of both sides of a conversation.  It gets even harder to match up replies when someone asks more than one question in a row.  Take this conversation:

• BrentO: “Has anybody out there used DirecTV? How’s the reception during thunderstorms?”
• BrentO: “I’m not sure whether to get them or Comcast. Has Comcast been reliable lately?”
• SQLRockstar: “@BrentO Yes, I use them, and they’re fine.”

Is @SQLRockstar referring to DirecTV or Comcast?  There’s no easy way to tell, especially if the reply was sent minutes or hours later.  Because of that, it helps to prefix your replies with a little about the question, like this:

• SQLRockstar: “@BrentO about Comcast – yes, I use them, and they’re fine.”

Some Twitter conversations may involve more than two people.  If you’ve got the room to include everybody’s names in the reply, then do it, so that everyone can notice your new reply easier.  Including someone’s name in a message greatly increases the chance that they’ll read it.