Take a good look at Bender.
Bender Bending Rodríguez is a fictional robot character in the animated television series Futurama.
Bender is a heavy drinker, smoker, and gambler and has been known as “pure evil”, by other characters.
Bender often shows signs of sociopath-like behavior, as he is a pathological liar, and rarely shows empathy towards anyone.
Why am I talking about Bender on this article? Because YOU look like Bender when you use auto DMs after a follow on Twitter. I asked on Twitter what people thought about auto DMs after a follow and there is a strong consensus that people need to stop doing them.
Here are the 4 reasons why you must stop using auto DMs on Twitter.
1. Auto DMs are artificial.
“Automated DMs takes the social out of social media”, said one tweep. Somebody took the effort to read your tweet, take a look at your Twitter bio, and make the decision of following you. In return, you…just don’t have time to do any of that and just set up an automated one-size fits all message. “I just don’t care about automated DMS”, chimed in another tweep.
2. Auto DMs make you look lazy.
Instead of doing auto DMs, another tweep recommends: “take a moment to read a follower’s profile and make a friendly comment about that follower and don’t talk about yourself”. This makes sense. By following you, people are listening to you ALL the time, so wouldn’t it be nice that you have a conversation with them, where THEY are the center of conversation, and not you? If you really feel that you have to answer every single follow with a DM, then take the time to prepare “authentic made-to-order fresh custom DMs”.
3. Auto DMs cast a cloud of doubt on your credibility.
Due to the heavy amount of advertising that we are exposed to every single day, people have learned to distrust automatic messages. For example, you trust your best friend to recommend you a certain chocolate because he/she knows what you like. She takes the time to get to know you. However, you wouldn’t trust a complete stranger to come up to you in the middle of the street and command “try this chocolate, it’s the best!”. Trust takes time to build up, it’s not automatic. Hence, automatic one-size-fits-all auto DMs do not build trust.
4. Auto DMs increase the chance that people will unfollow you right back.
Yes, you read that right. When asking tweeps about whether they unfollow somebody after receiving an auto DM generated from their follow, some replied: “No doubt”. One tweep even as far as calling people who do auto DMs, “losers”. Ouch.
Conclusion
Using auto DMs after somebody follows you makes you look like Bender. Bender is a jackhole. So, stop using auto DMs. If you must do a DM after a follow, take a moment to read the follower’s profile and make a friendly comment about that follower and don’t talk about yourself.
I dislike the Auto DM’s & never send them myself but my attitude has softened a bit, many folks are managing twitter accounts with thousands of followers, I don’t really mind receiving that first auto DM that says hello & thanks me for following, a link to that person’s facebook
or their site is ok as well.
What I really don’t like is people who treat DM as a way to regularly send me self-promotional material.Spam in my DM box on a regular basis will get you unfollowed or
blocked.
Thanks for the food for thought here.