Tessa Horehled | Strategic Marketer, Community Manager, Brand Strategist, Digital Communications Specialist | ATL / NYC

Twitter Tip: Optimizing Your Replies

So you’ve heard of this little microblogging site called Twitter by now if you don’t use it habitually. Some of us use it for business, some for pleasure, some for quick information. Many of us frequent users have our own little pet peeves with the service and our experience with it.

One of my personal pet peeves are when users I follow respond to
other people’s tweets and I have no idea what they are talking about. It interrupts my flow of reading down the list of tweets and if it’s in response to someone with a private profile who doesn’t follow me, I have no way of even clicking through to see what it is referencing. Single word and sentence fragments are the king and queen abusers.

I used to be one of those people. Once I hit a certain threshold in my number of users I follow in comparison to how much time I spent reading my Twitter stream, the replies such as those aforementioned now glaringly useless to me, made me reapproach how I attempt to respond to other users. Some parents teach their children to do this in conversation to help them stay on topic: Always respond with complete sentences.

One scenario — If someone asks a question in which you’re responding to, repeat a portion of their question when responding so your tweet will make sense to anyone who sees it. Your response is often short and putting context around it, most often will not push you over 140 characters. Take advantage of your space!

Example:
User: Does anyone have a coupon code for Web 2.0 Expo registration?
You: Yep! DM me. BAD
You: I have a Web 2.0 Expo registration coupon code. Direct message me & I will share! GOOD

I have found that by adopting this little trick, I have not only gotten more responses by my followers – often on bits in the middle of my initial conversation – but I also have attracted new followers by offering them more consistent content in my stream.

I could use a simple analogy to demonstrate: You are more likely to introduce yourself to someone in a crowd who is using open body language and eye contact versus someone who is standing in a small group with the arms folded across their chest. By replying on Twitter with full sentences, you are opening your tweets up to a larger group of people than simply the individual you are responding to.