PookyShares

It’s a great idea to thank new followers

It’s a fantastic idea to let every new twitter follower you gain know that you appreciate him or her.  Fact.  In an ideal world, we’d all do it with every follower.  But it’s not an ideal world and sometimes we’re a victim of our own success which makes life harder.

What happens when you get TOO many new followers?

I’m proud to say that one of the accounts I manage gained 954 followers this week.  Now that’s one hell of a lot of ‘thank you’s.  SO what do you do?  You set up an auto-DM of course, so that every new follower gets a generic message into their inbox letting them know that you’re eternally grateful for the fact that they’ve chosen to click the follow button.  WRONG.  NO.  It’s not cool.

Everyone knows you put no thought into it

Unlike a personal tweet where you’ve maybe checked out your follower’s profile or most recent tweets so you can try and get the conversation started and at least prove you took a moment to check them out, the auto DM screams ‘I can’t be bothered’.  I don’t for a moment expect every person who I follow to thank me for doing so.  It’s fantastic when someone takes the time to do so if they bother to say something different or something that provokes a response, but generally speaking any form of thanks for following all kind of wash over you.

Auto DMs are spam

Those auto DMs that so many people seem to have set up to give heartfelt thanks are nothing more than spam.  My inbox is full to bursting with them (alongside a whole heap of true twit validation messages of course) to the point that I tend to ignore my inbox completely.  It’s all junk.  Which means that when someone actually wants to send me a DM it’s lost in a sea of meaningless rubbish and can go unnoticed for far longer than I’d like.

Some auto DMs are worse than others

It’s bad enough when you’ve cobbled together some trite thank you – ‘Thanks for following, I can’t wait to engage with you’ or similar.  What’s even worse is ‘Thanks for following, you can find me on Facebook here…’  That’s like expecting me to put out on a first date.  I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU.  Let’s take it slowly okay?  Once I’m convinced about the merits of our relationship and I’m good and ready, I’ll take the next step.

And some people really should know better

So there was a particular auto-DM that triggered today’s rant, and it went like this:

“Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a social media marketing strategist for-hire. Let me know if I can help.”

Erm… hi Michael.  No offense or anything but you’re THE WORST SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGIST IN THE WORLD EVER.  Don’t auto DM me.  I don’t like it and I’m not the only one (right?) In fact your stupid auto DM irked me so much that I automatically unfollowed you.

The alternative

Look, I know you think it’s good manners to thank everyone who follows you but I honestly don’t think that ANYONE is getting anything out of those auto DMs.  Please.  PLEASE turn them off.  If you have more new followers than you have time individually reach out to then just accept that you’ll not be able to thank them all one at a time.  If your new followers are interested in the type of things you’re tweeting about then you’ll soon be chatting away in any case.  An alternative to thanking everyone is to take a look at your most recent followers periodically and skim through their profiles.  Every now and then someone will jump out at you.  That’s the person you reach out to. It might be one in twenty or one in a hundred, it doesn’t matter.  A few quality interactions often make far better business sense than endless meaningless interactions.   

So is it just me or do auto DMs drive you up the wall too?  What are your other social media pet hates?

Rant over!

Best wishes,

Pooky x