Today’s guest post is presented by Rachel Levy (@bostonmarketer), whose daily writings on marketing and social networking can be followed on her savvy blog www.rachel-levy.com.
If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you have no doubt heard of and probably seen auto-follows and auto-DM’s. If you’re new, I’ll explain them briefly below. I have fairly strong opinions (as usual!) on these topics, so I thought I’d share my thoughts.
Auto-follow
For every person who follows you, rather than going through and making an individual decision whether to follow back or not, you set up your account to automatically follow everyone who follows you. Socialtoo and TweetLater are two applications that I know of that do this.
Stepping back, first, I think it’s important to understand why you are using Twitter. Personally, I use Twitter to connect with people who have similar interests. I want to engage with people I find interesting, and who have something useful to say. It’s like going to a party… I want to talk to people I find interesting. (If you are on Twitter for a different reason, you will probably have a different thought on this.)
So, will you find every person who follows you interesting? Do you want to talk to everyone at a party who wants to talk to you? Many times the interest is mutual, but many times, it’s not. Therefore, why would you want to follow everyone back who follows you? Some people even go as far as un-following people who don’t follow them back. Again, my same thought applies. If you think they are interesting, it doesn’t mean they find you interesting. Why should their lack of interest in me, affect my interest in them (unless we’re talking about dating, of course!).
In general, I don’t understand the concept of why auto-following makes sense for people, but there are a few situations I see that it would be useful:
- People with tons of new followers every day – Personally, I am starting to see how difficult it can be to keep up with new followers, and I’m sure that people who add hundreds each day, can’t spend their life deciding who to follow. They have to auto-follow, in order to manage the flow. While I don’t know for sure, it appears that @GuyKawasaki and @Pistachio auto-follow, probably for this reason.
- Companies – If a person is interested in a company, then typically a company is interested in them. An example of this is @BostonTweetUp, an account I co-manage. We are interested in anyone who is interested in us. And, we want people to have the ability to DM us about events.
- Broadcast accounts – If you are an account that primarily broadcasts information, but you want to give people the opportunity to DM you, you might want to auto-follow. An example of this is @Twitter_Tips.
If you do decide to auto-follow, you will most likely need to set up a good system in Tweetdeck or another application to separate out those who you are actually interested in.
Auto-DM
For every person who follows you, you automatically sent them a DM (direct message). These vary in content, but are normally suggesting you visit their website or purchase their product. TweetLater is one application that I know of that allows you to set this up.
Using a networking event as an analogy, 
think of how you approach a party. You walk in, say hello, introduce yourself, and start chatting and getting to know each other. After a while of talking, you may start making a sales pitch or telling them what you can do to help them. But, you DON’T walk in and immediately say “Hi, would you like to buy my product?” That’s what an auto-DM feels like to me. It feels like spam, and that’s what the vast majority of people on Twitter feel. Do a search on auto-DM, and you’ll see it’s 95% complaints.
Some people even go as far to say “Auto-DM = un-follow”… if you auto-DM them, they will un-follow you. Socialtoo even dropped the ability to auto-DM from their service, and instead gave you a way to block auto-DM’s (a bold, but smart move on their part)
Until yesterday, there were no acceptable exceptions in my mind to my no auto-DM rule. Then I saw John Haydon’s take on auto-DM’s in his blog post… focus on OTHER people, rather than yourself. His auto-DM recommends people he thinks are good to follow, and he rotates the people for each auto-DM. I really like that idea, as it’s not salesy, and is helpful to most people.
(Photo credit: Cartoon, Networking)
What do you think? Are auto-follows or auto-DM’s OK? If so many people dislike auto-DM’s, why do so many people still use them?
June 8th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Rachel makes an excellent point. Personally auto-DMs have been a huge pet peeve of mine…can’t stand them. Though I completely agree that there are certain entities for whom auto-follow and perhaps even auto-DMs make sense. I like how you state that “companies” can benefit by using auto-follows because you should be interested in who follows you…hopefully auto-follows and DMs don’t make it too easy for people to miss out or skip important first time interactions that they should or may have otherwise.
Excellent post!
June 8th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Interestingly just today I set myself on auto-follow and set up auto-DM too, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. About the “auto-DM = auto unfollow”, like you wrote, you can’t walk in and start selling, so the reason why people are annoyed by the auto-DMs is the incorrect way most people do it, like “Hi, thx for the follow. Oh, go buy my stuff here!”. I like to use the auto-DM to do what I did manually anyway, which is more and less saying “Hi, thanks for the follow”.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Zemalf – Yes, I would be curious as to people’s thoughts on that type of auto-DM… I know I still don’t like it… it doesn’t feel genuine when you know the same message is just automatically going out to everyone. But, let me know how it goes! @BostonMarketer
June 13th, 2009 at 9:36 am
This is a great post! Thanks for writing it.
I’ve been taking an online course in social media. One of the presenters makes it a practice to auto-follow and use Tweetdeck or some other app to sort it all out.
However, I like your approach better. In the online world, it’s so tempting just to throw your marketing up against the proverbial wall and see what sticks.
But this method diminishes the personal touch. And isn’t effective marketing supposed to be about building relationships?
Maybe if I were selling a product like shoes, I’d feel differently. But I’m not. Maybe what it comes down to is that you have to use what feels right for you. And your post really nailed the way I feel about it.