I have been using twitter for about 7 months now. I love the service, I literally spend all day monitoring what’s going on in the tweetosphere. Not only is there such a tremendous amount of information and breaking news but there is such an opportunity to connect with people. Over the past couple months there has been a lot of talk about new services that have been popping up that allow for automated tweets to be sent when someone follows you or just when your away from your computer.
I didn’t really pay much attention to the conversation at 1st but then over the past couple days I got my first taste of automated DM’s. I have to say that I do not like it. It makes such a personal service so impersonal. I don’t understand the point of sending an automated DM to someone other then to promote your own stuff. Each auto DM that I got said something like this
“Hi, thank you so much for the follow. I am looking forward to connecting with you and would love to hear your thoughts on (my site/blog).”
The basic twitter etiquette has been established as form relationships by giving to people. It’s not about how many followers you have but about how close your relationships are with those followers.
These automated messages completely break that code. It looks like you either
1. Just want people to look at your stuff.
2. Don’t have the time/care who follows you so why should I care/take the time to look at your stuff.
If you are providing good content and helping other people by providing them content then you will eventually get noticed. Don’t push it on people with these automated messages. It may take a little longer for them to take a closer look at what you do but it will be worth it.
