Do you make this 'Twitter handle' mistake? Gone is the belief that Twitter is a platform exclusively for celebs.
Everyone these days seems to be on Twitter - are you? If so, are you aware of all of the mistakes people make on this platform?
You have probably spotted the following examples:
- Those who haven’t quite grasped the concept of Hashtags:
- Those who don’t pay attention to the character limit:
- Those who don’t shorten links:
But there’s one important mistake you could be repeatedly missing, especially if you use Twitter for your company's marketing communications..
You may know that to ensure a tweet includes another tweeter's account and is alerted to them as a notification, you must tag or 'mention' their Twitter handle by typing an '@' followed by their username. However, many people are unaware of the implication of placing these mentions at the start of a tweet.
Did you know that by starting a tweet with someone’s Twitter handle, you are limiting who will see it?
When using Twitter as part of an integrated social media marketing strategy, you probably spend ages crafting the perfect tweet. We know we do.
When wording a tweet, front-of-mind are your efforts to show your clients and followers all of the impressive tweeters you interact with, and the goal to ensure that your communications are exposed to as many relevant and influential people as possible.
All of this hard work can be wasted if you are unaware of this widely unknown Twitter rule.
Unless you have a word/character before the @ symbol, ONLY the followers of BOTH you and the person you have mentioned will see the tweet on their feed.
To guarantee that you are not one of the millions of Twitter users making this mistake, you should always avoid starting a tweet with a mention.
Sometimes, however, this may alter the effectiveness of your message, or take up valuable character space. Here’s a sneaky tip: begin your tweet with a full stop.
Simply inserting this (or any) character before the handle will remove the rule which restricts who the tweet is visible to, and will no doubt go unnoticed by most people who are unaware of this catch.
Had you noticed it before?
What other Twitter mistakes have you come across?
photo credit: mkhmarketing