Twitter Communication Types

I recently had the chance to talk social media during a webinar series at the Business Link. It can sometimes be tricky explaining the various Twitter communication types so I brought along a few of my friends* to help me out…

Tweet

• Talking to everyone at the cocktail party
• Public message broadcast to your followers and anyone else that comes across it

Mention

• Mention someone by including their handle in your Tweet
• This message will be broadcast to everyone that follows you and will be visible via Twitter search
• Consider it a “shout out”

Reply

• Talk to someone in public by starting your Tweet with their handle
• Only those users that follow you and the person you are talking to will see these replies in their stream
• Posts are still public, just not readily viewable by all users

Retweet

• Amplify a message from someone else and share it with your followers
• Retweets often contribute to trending topics
• People tend to Retweet timely, interesting and relevant information

Hashtag

• Hashtags help organize Tweets into topics and silos
• Airport codes are popular hashtags
• Making your own is easy but growing it can be a daunting task

Direct Message

• Twitter does have a private message feature
• These messages are only visible by the recipient and sender
• Sometimes these get confused with Tweets and private messages are accidentally made public

(I don’t have a visual example of a direct message because: a) The celebrity Tweet generator doesn’t do direct messages OR b) My celebrity friends usually don’t send me direct messages, they call or text me instead)

* These celebrities are not my friends… yet