About 4 years ago I wrote a blog post asking why every new blogger had to write a blog post about blogging. I guess Twitter's time has come. Every new Twitter (or old Twitter) has to write about how to use Twitter, how to gather more followers, what tools to use, yada, yada, yada.
All that I want to give you today are two very practical tips:
#1 You cannot send a DM (direct message) to someone that is not following you!
How many times you saw a tweet like this: "Send me a DM if you want to talk about X". Turns out that you this person didn't get any DM, most likely. Why? Because people cannot send direct message to you unless you are following them.
#2 Only Mutual Followers Can See @Replies
This is a bit harder to explain, but by default, if you send a message that starts with a @reply as in "@calbucci Marcelo is a great guy, you should really follow him" only the people that are following you and following that person (on this case @calbucci) will see this message. For example, if you re-tweet a message (aka RT), but you re-tweet w/ the sender Twitter account as the first word, only the people that are already following that person will get it.
I'm not sure I'm being very clear on what that means, but so you understand a bit better, go to Twitter -> Settings -> Notices and see the @ replies options. By default, you'll only see replies to the people you are following.
And just to be extra clear, @replies will appear on your tweet timeline for everyone to see, but they won't appear on your followers "view" unless they are also following that person.
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