Are you on Twitter? Do you enjoy your time on Twitter? Are you annoyed by the barrage of spam coming your way from auto Direct Message’s (aka DM’s)? Yeah, me too. In this post I want to talk about why your auto DMing people is damaging your social reputation.
I love Twitter, I really do. I have made connections with people all over the world who are totally awesome. I’ve had incredible conversations that have inspired countless blogs. Special shout out to a few of my favorites (but by no means everyone – sorry couldn’t fit everyone in here)
So let’s talk about how a relationship can build on Twitter in 6 easy steps.
- You post something.
- Someone else responds. (RT, @ reply, etc.)
- You enter into a 140 character conversation.
- You take the conversation to Direct Message.
- You take the conversation to e-mail.
- You take the conversation off-line.
Now, not every relation works like this but I’ve personally had many that have. I’ve met some awesome folks on Twitter that I’ve interviewed for my podcasts as well as introduced to like-minded folks I think would be good to do business together.
So what happens when someone REALLY amazing sends you a DM on Twitter because they want to get your attention? Do you see it right away? Do you see it at all? Maybe? Maybe not? Why, you ask? Because people are spamming the $*^(^ out of you with auto Direct Messages.
There are many rules to using Twitter correctly, and honestly, plenty of them I have broken myself. Including the dreaded auto DM. However, I learned very quickly that it was annoying and I needed to stop, so I did. If you currently have anything set up to auto DM anyone for any reason – STOP. Seriously, stop right now. All you are doing is spamming the person and you are likely not driving traffic back to where you think you are. The biggest culprits are sending people to your Facebook page, to your website, to opt-in to your list, etc. Just STOP.
When I get an auto direct message I usually do two things. 1) I go to the person’s Twitter page and immediately unfollow. 2) I delete the message out of my DM inbox.
Here are some examples. I consider all of these to be spammy but it’s hard to tell which are true spam and which are real people wanting to send traffic to their other social media outlets. Because it can be so confusing alone you should stop. Build a real relationship with people don’t just try to funnel traffic out of Twitter and on to Facebook. If that’s the case then stay off Twitter altogether and focus your efforts on Facebook.
According to a study by Optify, AutoDM use led to a 245% increase in unfollow rate. I’m right there with this stat unfollowing you.
Every time I open Twitter and have 96 new DM’s I cringe because I have to scour them closely to ensure I’m not missing a legit message from someone I want to hear from. This can be annoying for everyone. I want to develop a relationship with people not be spammed. So please, do yourself and your business a favor and stop spamming people and focus on building real relationships – it’ll do your business a world of good.
