The other day I saw this.

Aside from the account manager who seemed to copy/paste the URL of the Bitly confirmation page instead of the link itself, the rapid-fire, everyone-sees-everything approach did not go unnoticed.

As you might have guessed, snark ensued:

I think @SkiingMag is hiring an assistant editor. Just waiting for another 10 tweets to make sure.

— Adam St. Bear (@AdamStBear) May 21, 2015

@SkiingMag @NBSEasternReg As an assistant editor I would change the way you use link shorteners

— andrej (@letsjak) May 21, 2015

But then, just a few hours later on that same fateful day, I saw this:

There is a ton of turnover in resort marketing departments right now as the job board rather clearly indicates, so let’s review a simple piece of the Twitter platform in case these duties have fallen to someone else in the interim.

Who Sees What
In both cases, the account was tagged in the middle of the tweet. By so doing, all of the followers of the tweeter would see that content.

If, however, the account was tagged at the very beginning of a tweet, only the followers of that tweet who also follow the account that is being tagged would see that “reply” (well, at least that’s how Twitter would likely refer to it).

For example, ALL of Ski Flagstaff’s follower’s could see this:

Hey @jtimberlake PLZ help take FLAGSTAFF to top! Best Town @OutsideMagazine. I'm TRYING hard! http://t.co/hhQpOzgGWT pic.twitter.com/MzXIi9PvL8

— Ski Flagstaff (@SkiFlagstaff) May 21, 2015

But ONLY people who follow both Anna Banana AND Mr Timberlake would see this:

@jtimberlake now that you have a son can you go on tour with the rest of NSYNC? #thanks

— Anna Banana (@annadrinksbeer) May 21, 2015

In the first case, a bunch of celebs ignore your tweets while your followers get a feed full of repetitious, spam-like posts.

In the second case, a bunch of celebs still ignore your tweets but at least only the occasional follower who also follows the person you are tweeting at sees the tweet.

Capiche?

One Last Note
Now, personally, I probably wouldn’t take that approach from a brand account.

I’m not one to shy away from experimenting with borderline-spammy techniques (as a half-dozen account suspensions can attest), but that should be done from a personal or sandbox account, not the brand account.

Carry on.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.