Background
For reasons known only to Twitter's marketing plan or technical nerds, their handling off @replyNames is in transition from something everyone once understood pretty well, to a new and convoluted process that has confused and annoyed nearly everyone.
If you really need to real the whole weird backstory, start here: http://bit.ly/3cVkA.
But because all of this will probably change again before you've digested this, as of right now, all you really need to know is this.
Twitter has changed how @replies are handled. By default, when you click any kind of "reply" button (on the Twitter web page, in Tweetdeck, and in probably all other client apps), your tweet will only be seen by the person you reply to, and only those of your followers who also follow that person. This upsets many of us who want--or need--to discover new people by watching who our friends happen to engage by @replying to them.
To Illustrate: Should @whitehouse reply to @northkorea with a message like "We're invading your weird little country at dawn," the only people who will see that reply are @northkorea and anyone following that name. Thus, even though you may follow @whitehouse, you could miss their reply message if you never knew there was a @northkorea to follow in the first place.
Do you see the complete silliness at work here? This new and misguided policy removes the wonderful transparency that made Twitter a great place to discover people and ideas, and it's completely contrary to the spirit of many kinds of social networking. Twitter simply must fix it, or their entire future may be in doubt.
But until they do, here is the...
Workaround
If you want your followers to see your reply to someone, even if they don't follow that person:
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USING ANY REPLY BUTTON: Just add a period or exclamation points in front of the @reply name.
Example: !@shoqsmom Because I placed an exclamation point before your @name, all of my followers can see this tweet, even if they don't follow you
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NOTE1: While this makes it easy to reply, and forces the tweet to all your followers, the tweet is NOT threaded (as discussed above).
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NOTE2: Simply prepending "RT" to front of your tweets has the same effect as an exclamation point. It will be seen by all of your followers (assuming then you ARE retweeting--and not simply replying).
If you only want those also following a @name to see your reply to them, simply use any standard Reply button function.
Protest This Bizarre Policy Change at Twitter
By tweeting your displeasure with something like this (copy at will).
The CCs are Twitter executives, and the petition hashtag protesting this policy change.
DEAR @TWITTER: PLEASE RESTORE THE TRANSPARENT OPEN @REPLIES POLICY cc: @ev @biz #fixReplies
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