Recently, a bunch of folks (including me) have been making a small mistakes on Twitter that could create big problems. But his post is not about strategy or how to build better relationships with social media. This post would be best filed under “best practices on Twitter” or “things to remember when tweeting”.
1. Hashtag use
Problem: Lost tweets taken out of context. This happens when folks get involved with a hashtag-based conversation on Twitter, like “#obama09″ or “#oneword” and forget to include the hashtag. Users who are not in the conversation might get confused (or aroused) by posts such as “I’m crying. it’s beautiful.”, “God I love this man!” or “He’s got balls!”.
Solution: Always use the hashtag in every single tweet. That way, folks using tools like Tweetdeck or iTweet to filter on hashtags can easily follow the conversation.
2. @Reply use
Problem: You start feeling sad and hurt because someone you replied to has not replied back. This frequently happens when people post replies to someone that DON’T begin with the “@” sign. For example: “Yo, @ArilTara – I really love that blog post you wrote for 12for12k.Org – http://bit.ly/MvEt“. Becuase this post startes with “Yo”, April won’t easily see this post unless she’s using tools like TweetDeck or iTweet.
Solution: When you want another user to easily receive a reply, start it with the “@” character.
3. Careful with question marks and exclamation points
Problem: Posts intended for particular users are completely lost. This sometimes happens when you unintentionally create a new username by putting a “-”, “?” or “I” directly after the intended receiver’s username. For example, “@LizStrauss! “becomes the username, not “@LizStrauss“. Get it?
Solution: Use a space after all usernames. This way, ”@LizStrauss !” will be seen by Liz.
Update: #3 May no longer be an issue. See Hart’s comment below.
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