Twitter is an amazing place that allows people to connect to one another in real time. For bloggers, especially, it is a wonderland of opportunity to have your voice be heard. Before the invention of Twitter, there were very few blogs that were considered high traffic sites. Twitter has made it possible for “little ole me’s” to have their voice be heard because people can share their posts, links, and have their work RT’d to other people not in their stream. But somewhere along the way, someone thought of creating auto-follows and Auto DMs, mostly based on marketing techniques and strategies. Then the flood gates were let open and the inauthentic savvy markerters and marketing textbook approach began to run rampant on the social network.
The Auto DM was born.
Auto DMs did come from a good place—it gave the followee the opportunity to thank the follower with a snazzy and inventive opening remark. But it became obvious that it was a canned response not a true genuine introduction. And what was supposed to be a way to acknowledge a new follower became inauthentic and fake.
I have a question for you. If you were at a party and were introduced to someone, would you hold up a cue card and begin to spout a verbatim “pitch”? Would you, instead of shaking the hand of a person you just met, extend a fake, prosthetic hand for them to shake? Hopefully both of the answers to those questions are a “no”—so if you wouldn’t do that in person, why would you do that online on Twitter?
I get that people have to market themselves to get their name and business out there. But the people who are truly successful at marketing are people that don’t look like they are marketing themselves. It’s an organic, groovy kind of thing, not contrived, forced, or canned.
Sending Auto DMs are a complete fail because they scream that they are automatic responses. Even the best ones written cleverly and with thought in mind still aren’t authentic.
So please, I beg of you—just say NO to auto DMs. I promise, the world will thank you.
Photo credit: The Anti Social Media
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Right on. Thank you, and I agree with you 100%.
Thank you so much for commenting. A lot of people use auto DMs and don’t know how impersonal it makes them look. ^DL