Entered! If I win, totally buying an HHKB (to Type-S, or not to Type-S?).
I also broke a rule or two, I included a personal message and I "dot mentioned" you guys.
For the Twitter unaware: The first word in your Tweet determines which of your followers a tweet is visible to. In most cases, anyone who follows you will see your tweet on their feed right away. BUT, if your tweet starts with another user's Twitter username (for example: @ctrlaltio), then only people who follow both you and the user you tweeted at will see the message in their feed. For example:
"This is a tweet".
If I send this and you follow me, you'll see this on your Twitter homepage right now.
"@ctrlaltio. This is a tweet"
If I send this and you follow me, but you do
not follow @ctrlaltio, then you will not see this tweet on your Twitter homepage as it's, essentially, considered a more focused or, almost, private conversation. If you follow @ctrlaltio and me, you will see it though.
So, to get around this, the first word/character in your tweet just needs to not be a user's username. The convention there is to make that first character simply a dot. So this:
".@ctrlaltio. This is a tweet"
Will be seen by all of my followers on their Twitter homepage right away, regardless of whether or not they follow @ctrlaltio. This is called dot-mentioning. It's the best way to direct a comment at someone, but also make it publicly available. It's quite useful in marketing. Consider: "@lays, your chips are great!" Almost no one follows the @lays brand. No one is going to see this. ".@lays, your chips are great!" Now people following the Tweeter will see the tweet and you have effectively marketed/promoted on Twitter.
Looks like there are some new folks to Twitter here, so I thought I'd share some rather commonly used tactics for marketing and promotion. Maybe even Bunz found it useful
!
Good luck all!
EDIT: nikftw explained what I did before I got to it
. I'm keeping mine though... cause I wrote it, and I like what I wrote
. Everything he said is also true and all of this is quite valid and useful for gaining social media traction.