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
