Meta Tweeting: The Thread About Threads

Sally Albright
Sallying
Published in
2 min readFeb 14, 2017
  • Twitter threads can be very confusing, but with few tricks we can make our conversations a bit easier to follow:
  • For tweetstorm formatting, @WriteRack makes it seamless. Compose directly or paste into their interface, it does the rest. Make sure you test the spacing a few times before posting.
  • To thread your tweets manually, just post the new tweet as a reply to the previous tweet. Don’t forget to remove the tags.
  • When replying, if your tweet begins with anything but @[name], all of your followers will see it. You can use a dot or put the tags somewhere else in the tweet
  • If your reply begins with @[name], your followers will see it in your TL but it will be under the “replies” tab on your profile page
  • To see what a tweet is referring to, click the time stamp. To avoid confusion, be sure to tag the right poster & reply to the right tweet
  • If you quotetweet, the original poster will see it but won’t see the interactions. It’s good form to tag them, since it is their tweet
  • If you have a poster muted but want to see their side of a conversation, just follow them, then unfollow to mute them again
  • Twitter used to let you block right from the profile popup, but now you have to click to the page to block or mute. Annoying. @Support
  • Threads where OP quotetweets their previous tweet are hard to follow and tangential replies aren’t displayed at all
  • Manual quotetweets, where OP tweets someone else’s tweet in quotations, are annoying & disrupt the conversation
  • Try to space your tweets so they make sense on their own. Avoid incomplete thoughts and sentence fragments if possible
  • And for the love of Pete, please number your tweets. Once you get RT’d out of order your thread becomes useless, impossible to follow
  • Indicate that your thread has ended with an x [11/x] or [end] or anything else that makes it clear
  • If your thread gets broken or you need to add to it, indicate so in a reply to the last threaded tweet and paste your new tweet in the reply
  • Even if you already know this stuff, please realize many don’t. More standardization will make thing flow more smoothly for all of us.
  • Questions? Just ask. If anyone has other tips, tweet me or leave me a comment.

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Sally Albright
Sallying

Comms Strategist, Organizer, Voter Advocate, Rock&Roll Girl. Unprofessional Writer. Don’t be alarmed if I mistake you for a hat. http://SallyingForth.com