How Not to Limit Your Audience
There is a little known trick in Twitter that changes the size of the audience you reach with your tweets.
If you start your tweet with an @ mention, you limit the size of your audience.
Example:
@suzie has such a great website. Go check it out.
When you write a tweet like this, it will no longer appear in all of your followers newsfeed. It will now appear only in the newsfeed of the people who follow both you and @Suzie. This is because Twitter views this as a conversation primarily between you and @Suzie, even though it is still publicly visible.
You may have seen tweets that start with a period. This is someone trying to avoid limiting their tweet audience, while still pretty much starting the tweet with an @.
Example: . @Suzie has such a great website. Go check it out.
To prevent the accidental limiting of your tweet, you must start it with another character. That character can be anything other than @.
However, it is better to move the placement of your at mention, if you are not wanting to limit the audience.
Example: Really great website! Go check it out @Suzie
or
I love @Suzie's website. Go check it out.
By moving the @ mention to a different position in the tweet you will open up the tweet to appear in the newsfeed of everyone who follows you. Plus it now looks more like an open conversation, rather than a conversation between you and Suzie.
When people see tweets that start with @, even if there is a . at the beginning, we tend to glance past them. Unless it is directed towards us, we know that it is a tweet meant for someone else and we are less likely to read it.
So if you are tweeting and want people to see your tweet, make sure you don't start with an @ mention.
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