One of the neatest things about Twitter is that it is easy to automate many functions. One of the most misunderstood and misused functions on Twitter is the direct message. There are third party services that let you automatically message people that sign up to follow you on Twitter, I do not believe that you should auto direct message people when they follow you.
Let me say, that I used to auto-message people when they followed me back in my early days on Twitter. I thought that a quick welcome message was a good thing. Over my time on Twitter, I’ve learned that a quick, personal welcome message is a good thing, a quick automated and therefore not personal message is not.
Look, I don’t mind someone sending me a personal direct message.
I’ve gone through the trouble of looking at their profile, and determining if I should use one of my allotted follow slots on them, and I appreciate that they’ve taken the time to look at my profile, follow me, and then send me a message. I love that, I feel that making these types of connections are what twitter is all about.
What I hate, and I recommend you stay away from, are automated messages telling me how to “get more than 16,000 followers in the next 90 days” or “buy my thing-a-ma-bob, it’s great!” or the dreaded “here’s my free gift to you” type messages.
By the way, if you have less than 16,000 followers you have no credibility trying to push a product on me that shows me how to get more than 16,000 followers. It tells me, among other things, that you don’t use the product yourself, or the product doesn’t work.
Another thing that’s annoying about auto-messages: A lot of people have direct messages forwarded to their cell phones, and using up my allotment of text messages on automatic direct messages irks me. I’m sure that it irks other people too.
There are only so many times that anyone can get the same canned message about 16,000 followers, or about your book, or your gift or whatever. Seriously, I want to know more about you before I buy anything from you.
Hopefully, you’ll get to know more about me and you’ll figure out what to sell me. I’m not saying don’t sell on twitter. I’m saying find out what my needs are, and then offer me something that could meet my needs.
Twitter is a global cocktail party thrown by regular people. It’s not a global infomercial.
Those get 16,000 followers when they only have a fraction of that ruins their credibility (what little they get by default that is).
Spammy autodms are a good way to encourage people to unfollow right away.
I am curious about auto DMs that ask someone to join their fan page or visit their website. How do you feel about those?
I’m on the fence with that type of auto DM. I don’t think they’re as bad as the spammy ones, but I do feel it’s a little forward to want me to go friend them on facebook or somewhere else. Specially if I don’t know who they are. The sender doesn’t know what I use FB for, or even if I use FB at all. Their website is on their profile so it seems redundant to invite me to their website again.
I’m not opposed to getting to know someone better, specially if I’m interested in what they have to say. An auto DM just seems like a fake way to engage with me.