No Auto DM’s
Recently I was researching a topic in social media. As a result I had several twitter followers put me in touch with their favorite sources on twitter. Naturally I followed the people they recommended and the people doing the recommendations. From one of them I got the dreaded auto DM. I supose I should be glad that I only got one considering I probably followed 10-15 people that night.
My reaction: I find it disturbing that someone helping me with Social Media Best Practices Q earlier today has sent me an auto DM.
Auto DM’er (Sent via DM so name withheld): Touche! But, the auto DM saves me a ton of time. We single moms have to save time as much as we can:-)
Saves you time? Seriously? Auto DM’ers are filling up my DM inbox and email inbox with messages that say “thanks for the follow. Please buy my crap” or “Thanks for the follow. here is where you can find more crap I’m involved with” If you actually think I might be interested in something you are involved with then tell me, personally.
Picture this scenario; you attend a function in your city and meet many people. A few days later you recieve a hand written note from Jane Smith. It says that it was a pleasure meeting you and invits you to drop by her office any time. Jane thinks they might have some things at her office you might be interested in or business she can help you with.
Jane was nice enough to take time and send a hand written note and she might have something of interest to you. So, you decide to stop in for a bit, but you enter the wrong door. Jane is not there. Instead there a scanner auto scanning a stack of business cards that Jane has collected at community events. A machine is printing out what looks like personal hand written notes just like the one you received.
Now how do you feel about Jane. For me, I don’t care what she has in her store or how much she can help me in business. She is pretending to be personal but she is fake and she has waisted my time.
A DM has some similarities to a personal note. I open it before I open the rest of the mail. A DM hits my email box and when I get a DM I assume it’s because someone would like a private response and it is probably something more important than an @reply. It used to work that way before auto dm’s started filling up my email.
For a while 9/10 messages in my DM box were auto DM’s. That’s when I started unfollowing or blocking auto DM’ers. I simply couldn’t find the real messages in all the “thanks for the follow, please buy my crap” auto DM’s. How does wasting my time = saves you time? It’s an unnecessary and unwanted message in my inbox. If you are fake and want to waist my time in favor of “saving” your time, then you are a spammer and you are not worth my attention.
Stephanie Lynch Said,
April 23, 2010 @ 8:03 pm
socialoomph is a free service that allows you to purge your DMs with 1 click. (www.socialoomph.com) and, no i am not affiliated;-p
it also allows you to systematically “spam” with DMs–which i think is what you were referring to–and something i just saw in their feature list tonight.
when i sent auto DMs, it was ONLY as an introduction when someone initially followed me. i would never in a zillion years send automatic DMs randomly. what good would that do?
i thought the purpose of the auto DM was simply to say–”hi, thanks for the follow…in case you didn’t know…blah blah blah”. NOT–”buy my random piece of junk, my social media white paper or some other unrequested piece”.
however, Twitter api is sometimes overloaded–which means that if you sit down and follow 15 random people–it might take hours for their introductory auto DM to make it into your box.
i have deleted the auto DM for inital followers. but, i’m still on the fence. i see that it makes you hopping mad. but, it seems to me that you’re getting spammed by people who are sending out random DMs–NOT–people who are sending “hi and thank you” introductions. it doesn’t bother me to get auto DMs. if anything it makes me interested in what and how they present themselves–as a calling card. call it marketing research. call it curiosity. call it late night boredom. but, some of them are actually really clever. some of them (i’ll agree mine included)…not so much.
cheers!
Megan Said,
April 24, 2010 @ 9:03 am
No, I’m talking about exactly the ”hi, thanks for the follow…in case you didn’t know…blah blah blah”. They wast my time. I have to open each one on the off chance that one is an actual personal message from someone who put time and though into it and deserves a response. Not a mass mailer that the author set up months ago and hasn’t given a second thought about since.
Your “…blah blah blah” is just your own version of ”buy my random piece of junk, my social media white paper or some other unrequested piece”. Especially when it’s next to the other 20 “thanks for the follow” messages I got yesterday. I’m sure you are very nice and well meaning, and your “…blah blah blah” is important to you. But that doesn’t mean it’s important to everyone who follows you.
I followed you in particular because we had a conversation and you helped me out. Much appreciated by the way. If your DM had been a personal one like “hi Megan, thanks for following me and I’m glad I was able to connect you with the people you were looking for” it would have been welcomed. It probably would have gotten lost in all the other “thanks for the follow” messages but at least it clearly wasn’t sent by a bot.
Rick Calvert Said,
January 3, 2011 @ 8:29 pm
Auto DM’s suck. Most people who send me one get unfollowed. It is a violation of the twitter social contract.
We follow people we are supposed to trust, like and be interested in. An Auto DM is a violation of that trust. Otherwise Twitter becomes just the latest junk mail receptacle like email or my snail mail post box.
Unfortunately I belong to one of I’m sure thousands of social media marketing groups out there and recently someone asked the question “what should I do to get more followers for my company’s twitter account?”
A question that has its own problems, but at least a 100 marketers responded with all sorts of auto follow and auto DM schemes. These weren’t all internet markety scammer type people or I wouldn’t even be in the group in the first place. These were respected VP’s and directors of marketing at legitimate businesses. They are all teaching each other how to ruin our latest escape from the barrage of unwanted, unnecessary marketing (.
/rant off