From time to time it can be useful to keep an ongoing Twitter conversation together. This can be done by replying to a tweet.  Whilst you can also interact through a tweet by mentioning individuals or by adding a comment as a nested retweet, these do not allow you to develop a threaded conversation where the tweets of all those involved in the conversation are kept together.

In the example below you can see 39 people have liked the tweet and 22 have engaged with it (19 retweets and 3 comments).

Five great tips (+ free guide) from @ProfSallyBrown and @RacePhil for anyone giving their first ever lecture (or conference presentation)
1. be prepared
2. be heard
3. be comfortable
4. be confident
5. be interactive
plus a useful reminder ‘be yourself’ https://t.co/SyWyxoqhUm

— Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) August 20, 2018

If you then click on the tweet it will then provide a view of the tweet which includes the comments. You can reply to any of the tweets here and they will be added to this thread of tweets. (As I am viewing from my tweet I can also ‘add another tweet’ to the thread of comments.)

How to reply to a tweet

There are a number of ways to do this.

Direct reply to one person
This is a direct response to a tweet another user has made.

1. Find the Tweet you want to reply to.
2. Hover over the bottom left hand corner of the tweet
3. Click or tap the reply icon
4. A compose box will pop up, type in your message and click or tap Reply to post it.

Direct reply to a tweet  with multiple usernames
As above. If the original tweet was sent to more than one person, their usernames will also be included in the reply. To remove any mentioned in the original tweet, click on reply and then click on the names and then these will be displayed as a list. You can then uncheck the names you wish to remove.

Nested retweet
This is where you retweet with a nested comment. This will appear above the original tweet.

1. Hover over the bottom of the tweet and click or tap on retweet.
2. Add a comment and then click or tap on retweet again.

A nested reply will look like this. However it will not be linked to other replies.

Some of the techniques are transferable! https://t.co/8hcn5NHtHl

— Sally Brown (@ProfSallyBrown) August 20, 2018

Who sees your reply?

This will depend on whether the person follows you.

• Not following you: The tweet will show in their notifications (unless they have chosen to mute these)
• Following you: The tweet will appear in their timeline and notifications

What you will see when someone replies to you 

• Not following you
  If someone sends you a reply and you are not following them, the reply will not appear in your Home timeline. Instead, the reply will appear in your Notifications tab.
• Following you
  When someone replies to one of your Tweets you will see Replying to you before the Tweet and you will receive a notification in your Notifications tab.

If you click or tap on a reply in your timeline, it will expand to display the Tweet that was replied to.

To view conversations on other’s profiles go to their home page and rather than view just Tweets, click on Tweets and Replies.

Protected Tweets
Replies from people with protected Tweets will only be visible to their accepted followers.

Muting notifications for a conversation

If you would like to stop receiving notifications for a particular conversation, you can choose to mute it. When you mute a conversation, you won’t get any new notifications about that conversation. You will, however, still see Tweets from the conversation in your timeline and when you click into the original Tweet.

To mute a conversation via twitter.com, or from your Twitter for iOS or Android app:

1. Go to the Tweet detail of any Tweet or a reply in the conversation you wish to mute.
2. Click or tap the  icon.
3. Tap Mute this conversation.

Maximising visibility of your tweets

If your Tweets are not protected, then all replies are public, but only relevant people, such as those who follow you and someone who is part of the conversation, will see your reply in their Home timeline, even if you begin your reply with “.@”.

There are times when you would like all of your followers to be able to see your interaction with a tweet. You can do this by Retweeting or Retweeting with a nested comment.

How to add media to a tweet

1. Type your Tweet into the compose box at the top of your Home timeline, or click the Tweet button in the top navigation bar.
2. You can include up to 4 photos, a GIF, or a video in your Tweet.
3. You can include a URL link in your tweet by typing or pasting this into the message
4. Click the Tweet button to post the Tweet to your profile.

How to mention someone in a Tweet

1. Type your message in the Tweet compose box.
2. Type the “@” symbol before the username(s) when addressing a particular account(s). Example: “I’m Tweeting on @Twitter!”
3. Click or tap Tweet to post.

Deleting a Tweet

Now and again you may spot a typo and want to delete a tweet. To do this:

1. Visit your Profile page.
2. Locate the Tweet you want to delete.
3. Click the  icon
4. Click or tap Delete Tweet.

Further help

Twitter help: https://help.twitter.com/

A caveat to this post is that Twitter has a habit of continually changing things so do make use of their help pages for up to date guidance!