Maybe you don't face that problem, but let me tell you, Twitter DM's are the new spam. While most people don't spam you too much, I've about had it with the "join my Mafia", "is this you in the picture", and "click here to validate" spam redirections. I've about given up on reading DMs just because of it. But before you agree and give up on the value of an auto-responder, I wanted to share a decent, or better yet, potentially useful DM after following Thomas Korte, or @thomask.
Why should you care? Thomas is an angel investor, so he get's even more spam than most of us, and most of it well intentioned spam from entrepreneurs trying to get his attention. That made me curious to see how he would handle Twitter follow requests, so I followed him, and his "follow response" is one of the rare and useful DMs I've received:
(follow-response) Hi. You might find this post interesting: "How to cold-email me (or anyone else) http://t.co/WOfRXJcOf course, it looks simple and plain, and it could be a spam link. I clicked through and was taken to a very concise and to the point blog post about how to pitch him while showing some respect for his time in the process.
So have I been cured of my worry of DM spam? No, but I do know that there's an exception to the expectation of DM spam. By providing true value and NOT upselling me in his auto-DM, Mr. Korte has set an example that I would like others to follow. So if you use an auto-DM as a follow response, don't blow your connection to your follow - just add value, an maybe you can start you Twitter relationship on a positive note.
I rarely look at Twitter DMs (direct messages), most of them invite me to connect on FB to someone I don't know ... on the other hand, I have been sending out a DM that simply states a thankyou for following and that I try to send only Tweets of value .... I think the notion of sending a DM with some value is a good idea. It's easy enough to change the DM, so it can be something currently relevant and related to your business.
ReplyDeleteThanks Geoff. I've seen a number of people complain about "thanks for following" messages as too much like Myspace and the "thanks for the add" messages I used to see there. To some people, it seems, anything w/o some tangible value is considered spam.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me wonder about how high the filter is - as a deterrent to social media applications.