Member Survey: To Auto DM or Not To Auto DM…
February 22, 2009 by Kristie Wells
There are several services available today such as Twollow and SocialToo that help Twitter* users send an automated direct message (DM) to anyone who follows them. Some people use this auto DM this to say ‘thank you for following me,’ while others provide links to their websites or information they feel their followers would be interested in – some purely self promotional, others not.
Some folks love the auto DMs, some folks hate it.
It has been a hot issue on Twitter recently, so we thought we put together a quick poll (online or click on green ‘vote’ button on top right of map below) for YOUR thoughts, then write a little summary post and share the information with the SMC community. Answer away, we can’t wait to see what you have to say (note, we made it either love it or hate it to keep answers pure and easier to track for the purpose of this post – also, you do not need to be registered on ask500people.com to place your vote, but need to have an account if you wish to leave a comment).
*If you have not heard of Twitter before, it is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post and read updates from other users. We encourage you to check out this swell video our friends over at Common Craft put together to explain it in a little more detail.
Ask500 is telling me I have to login/signup just to vote. Boo…. I’m in the “Don’t like it one bit” category, but I’m not registering on yet another site just to vote.
If you create an account on Socialtoo, you can use it to opt out of all their auto DMs, plus some other services.
Tweetlater also has an opt out option for auto DMs
I treat auto-DMs to follows as spam, the spammer then has to do a lot more to get my further respect and trust. Learn from the best who, if they want to thank every single follower, do it personally. Personal is better than machine. Not-at-all is better than machine. It’s easy to see who thinks a robot is appropriate for something so personal as social media…
I love them! I use one on my personal account (@JMKom) that weeds out the autofollowers and provokes responses from people I really want to meet and interact with! Follow me and see for yourself!
InJoy!
j
Jay, Ask500People lets anyone vote without signing up… once. If you share your IP address with another visitor to a specific poll, or try to vote a second time, though, yes, you will be prompted to login.
Doesn’t an auto DM go against the format for Twitter Ethics? I thought people with more followers seem to have less “automatics” and more of a personal, unique response. Having an auto response is easier indeed, but how is easy rewarding? Put in the time to build the relationship to talk to individuals and you”ll prevail.
I have a hard time taking Auto Responses seriously.
I take the time to look up every new follow and if they have something unique or interesting make a comment about it and include our standing brand tagline whether it is my personal twitter account @bmaldonado or the brand that I write for @OUTUGO. Taking the time to put a personal note makes your followers feel valued and is important as we each create our social media communities.
If you are someone who is just looking to rack up the number of followers, then maybe a personal touch isn’t going to work. But for me and Out-U-Go! we want quality followers that match our interests, rather than large number of followers.
I dont like the AUTO anything in SocialMedia. I think it kills the intent. Everytime i get a new follower, i look up their profile. I read through some of their recent activity and decide if i think it is a good fit to follow back. If i do, I like to message them a quick hello. I dont want to send out form letters
@Chris: I’m with you. I’m deliberate in who I follow, and hope the same of those who follow me. I am hoping to have something more substantial in common with them than we both happen to be on Twitter.
I think auto-DM’s smack of pseudo- personalization. “Thank you for following me,” “I’m honored.” How is that possible if you have no idea who I am?
I commit to no auto-anything, at least not in a venue that is supposed to be conversational.
If social media is about conversation, how can bots take your place? They can’t.
I didn’t vote because I don’t love/can’t live without it but I don’t hate it/wish to get rid of it either. The vote didn’t allow for gray areas. I personally don’t use one now because a lot of real busy folks don’t want their mail boxes flooded and others see it as impersonal and fake socializing. However when I receive one I don’t get offended. Some folks mean well by it. @sheenamariebee
When I get auto DMs I can pre-categorize the follower to some extent before even ‘meeting’ him or her. Some have created a nice message, not pushy or patronising, just friendly and open to the correct interpretation. Others make total fools of their senders, especially those from wannabe gurus whom I have followed back out of courtesy and whose DM suggests that I followed them first and am desperate for advice on how to live my life!
In many cases, the sender has been misled by just such a’guru’ into believing that sending an auto DM of the kind is correct procedure. Lately I have disabused quite a few relative newbies of the idea that promoting Gary McCaffery´s ghastly Ponzi-style follower-collecting scheme, and others like it, in their auto DM is a great way to “win friends and influence people” as the great Dale Carnegie put it.
The whole concept of automated DMs or any other kind of tweet is entirely opposed to my idea of what constitutes ’social’ and I am not afraid to say so. If that loses me a grillion followers I might have had, then so be it. Who wants followers who do not like it when one is oneself?
I’ve had a little over 5k auto DM’s go out in a ’social experiment’ I’ve been running since last October… The response from my DM’s and @neoblog ’s back have been amazing 99% loves the video idea and didn’t mind the auto DM because it brought them to a simple / free / solution for their own followers! In those 5k + responses about 5 have been negative about the auto DM process… Everyone else loves it…
But I did things a bit differently – in that I’m not pushing anything – not giving you a free ebook or asking you to add a bunch of other crap either… .02
Here’s the DM in case your curious –
Thanks for the follow! I made you a 30 second Twitter Welcome Video http://neo1seo.com/tweeple Thanks again, David Brown
Well… I guess I voted… There was no definitive feedback, but the button on the survey stayed stuck down.
To reiterate: I don’t like auto-DMs. The more they try to sound like a human, the more disingenuous I find them: “Hi! Thanks for following me. I’m looking forward to chatting with you!” The ones that offer me a “free gift” if I click on their link just scream strictly commercial, and make a terrible first impression.
I follow people because I noticed they said something particularly interesting, and/or because others I like are conversing with them. The DM interaction is a brush off that feels like being handed a business card at a friend’s dinner party. It’s boorish.
I would not mind an honest acknowledgment, like “Hi. I’m away from my computer right now. Thanks for following me.” It’s the creepiness and dishonesty of the fake “interaction” that I find so annoying.
I don’t even see where the voting widget is – maybe the voting period has passed? But I’m definitely anti-auto follow, I wrote a post about it on my blog (http://katie.heyvan.com/2008/12/29/uncategorized/dont-talk-to-me-if-youre-on-auto-pilot/) if you’re interested. (Sorry to self-promote but it’s totally topical.) There are a lot of tools out there that will help to automate your Twitter, but they’re just tools. It’s how you use them that matters. I saw one comment here about how the auto DM weeds out auto followers…There’s gotta be some irony in there using one auto service to outwit another auto service. For the most part I think Twitter is about making genuine connections with people and automating parts of that process is always going to take a little bit away from it. Each person has to decide for themselves where the balance in the trade off between time investment and authenticity is.
excuse me, I mispoke, I meant to write, “I’m definitely anti auto DM” but I’m also anti auto follow so I guess it’s not such a big slip up.
In my opinion Polls are are a great way to create important data bases for your company, you Don`t need to have too much knowledge about tatistics, you could just read something in Google.
Karl Strauss
Economist
Harvard University
Allowing only a love or hate response without providing an opportunity to specify the perspective of the response — as DM sender or DM receiver — isn’t as useful as it could be.(I hate automated messages simply because it’s one more opportunity to dehumanize social media.)
Since I believe in Social Media as a great opportunity to foster meaningful conversations I don’t believe in any tool to do so. I love tools to search and analyze, but I don’t see any value in auto-responding. All our communication channels are filled with noise, and it’s getting harder and harder to filter the melodies out – so why add some extra sound?
[...] direct messages. I was thrilled to see wide (although not unanimous) agreement. Check out Kristie Wells’ post (which includes a poll) and Dave Fleet’s [...]
I’m not going to be a frothing-at-the-mouth opposer to them, but I’m against DMs. Everyone knows they’re BS, though I have seen 2 (out of hundreds) use them in a novel, funny way.
There may be a day that I use DMs, but I will NEVER use a name script, as in “Hello , thanks for following”. For accounts like my “a new mode” (@anewmode) account, a ton of auto-DMs will say, “Hello, a new. Thanks for following.” It looks sloppy and dumb and from a personal branding viewpoint, it’s a bad way to start a branding relationship.
Eric Mertz (@EricMertz)
I really could do without the auto DM. Personally I’ve gotten pretty bizarre responses from people with the auto DM referencing things that I have no interest in whatsoever. If you’re going to do it make sure it’s not obvious or at least reference the fact that you’re just trying to get information to people that are following you on twitter.
I really could do without the auto DM. Personally I’ve gotten pretty bizarre responses from people with the auto DM referencing things that I have no interest in whatsoever. If you’re going to do it make sure it’s not obvious or at least reference the fact that you’re just trying to get information to people that are following you on twitter. The more transparent you can be about it maybe the better.
Jason Broaddus (@JasonBroaddus)
Sorry for the double post, now triple post…
As I see it, the primary issue with auto-responders is that they are impersonal, highly subject to misuse and can be easily turned into another spam tool. Granted, I’m still fairly new to Twitter. My two business profiles, and one personal profile, have only been around for a matter of weeks. But, the technology is the same with many other resources. I do know that those who choose to follow our tweets are looking for information and a touch of humor. I would rather take the time to maintain that personal interaction with those followers, as they are our target audience. Tools used for a business purpose should augment your bottom line, never take away from it. Just my $0.02
Just thought I would pop back and mention that, since I posted my earlier comment, the number of auto DMs arriving on my account has escalated to the point of overwhelm, with almost 95% of new followers now virtually spamming me when I follow them back!
The only reason I can offer for this is that there must be some very influential false ‘gurus’ working overtime!
If I don’t reply to those DMs I will appear ill-mannered and if I do there will be no time for any other activity in my life! What to do?
[...] Member Survey: To Auto DM or Not To Auto DM… (socialmediaclub.org) [...]
Hey Linnet -
I say DON’T respond unless you genuinely like the auto-DM. I saw two clever auto-DMs in all my Twittering. I mainly liked them because they poked fun at Auto-DMs, come to think of it.
I’m not going to feed the beast though. It takes no effort to make an auto-DM and it’s annoying. Why reward spam? It will just make “experts” say, “Auto-DMing WORKS! Make sure you do it!”
You make a very good point, Eric, although I’ve had quite a few people thank me for giving them the heads-up about using auto-DMs, I dare say others have smirked because they would rather make a bad impression than no impression at all.
Maybe I will start publicly tweeting people to say that, like most people I don’t appreciate their auto DMs – a follow is the finest greeting! An auto DM is neither a good substitute for a follow nor a necessity if the follows are reciprocal.
Thanks for making me see the problem from a different viewpoint!
Linnet,
Thank you – I like you’re viewpoint too. A template response to an auto-DM would be pretty good. A little CTRL-C, CTRL-V action to get through a page worth of auto-DMs.
As for the following as a greeting – I agree! I have no problem with an auto-follow.
I dislike auto DMs for a few reasons: Firstly, I think a lot of people using them miss out on opportunities to legitimately connect with new followers through a sincere, personalized hello message. They tend to think that the automated response has made that connection on their behalf, which is just untrue.
Secondly, if I’ve chosen to follow someone on Twitter, I’ve done it because their profile looked interesting to me. There’s certainly no need to try to sell me something, send me to your website (if you looked interesting enough to follow, I’ve probably already gone to your site to check it out), or give me unsolicited advice before you know me. I’ve already decided that you seem interesting based on your tweets and/or background, so just relax and take your time developing that relationship.
Thirdly, auto DMs are becoming so commonplace that it can be hard to find actual personal DMs amid the clutter.
All that said, I don’t unfollow someone or judge them too harshly based solely upon an auto DM because I think that we’re all at different stages when it comes to learning how to best use social media tools. It’s entirely possible that someone is taking that approach because they don’t yet understand that it’s not the best option. Maybe they were advised to do so by some “guru” or “expert” or maybe they’re simply trying to be friendly or polite and haven’t yet figured out that there are better ways.
Part of this journey is being patient with one another while we all learn best practices. That said, if you’ve read all these comments and are still sending out auto DMs, knock it off already…’kay?
[...] Member Survey: To Auto DM or Not To Auto DM… (socialmediaclub.org) [...]
[...] Here are two posts talking about why you should not: Tweeter Blog: How to STOP These Freakin Auto DMs Social Media Club: To Auto DM or Not to Auto-Dm [...]
I also do not like auto DMs – I find them far too impersonal and would rather receive no message at all in response.
I can certainly sympathise with those folk who have thousands of followers and new followers regularly. It must be very difficult to keep up with them all, even with boilerplate text saved to insert in each message. As a relatively new Twitter user, I’m still keeping up without a problem.
However, having said that, here’s my plea …
“When I follow you it’s because I’ve taken the time to browse your tweets, Twitter page and website or blog and appreciated something in particular that I’ve read there. So unless you are prepared to do the same and actually engage with me in some way, don’t send me an auto DM! And also don’t feel you have to follow me back.”
To date though, I admit I’ve mostly had personalised responses from those I’ve followed. Possibly because when I choose to click ‘follow’ there I almost always also send an @reply or RT to acknowledge something in particular that has impressed me.
From my perspective, online social networking is like any other form of networking – it’s about building relationships. And that’s done through genuine connection, not auto-robots.
Auto DMs in response to followers – and indeed auto-following and the obsession with follower numbers on Twitter – seem to me to be like the ‘card harvesters’ at face-to-face networking events whose goal appears to be to collect and distribute as many business cards as possible, no matter whether or not there is any real connection with others.
Just my two cents’ worth!
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Да, инет – огромен, если и такое можно откопать