The Direct Message (DM) option on Twitter is useful as it allows you to send someone a private message, which is handy occasionally if you want to quickly send something in private that you don’t want the world to say.
With only 140 characters to write your direct message, it’s not going to replace email but it is still useful. Well, that’s what I used to think. I’m not so sure anymore as it seems like every other person is using an ‘Auto Reply’ to thank you for following them. I’m getting about a dozen direct messages everyday now thanking me for following them.
I know that Twitter is an extremely powerful marketing tool and this kind of thing will probably bring you more traffic but this new Auto Follow trend annoys me for a few reasons.
First of all, getting so many direct messages makes the DM system less useful. Twitter doesn’t distinguish between which messages were auto replies from following someone and which messages are legitimate messages i.e. messages I want to read. At the moment I still have notifications turned on so that I get an email everytime I get a new DM because I don’t want to miss anything important.
However, I can see me having no choice in the future but to have to switch email notifications off because 95% of messages are spam.
Auto Reply Spam Problem
That’s not the only reason these auto replies are annoying me. The second is self promotion. People seem to be promoting one of two things : either their website or some product.
Again, I recognise that Twitter is about self promotion but as someone who checks the bio of everyone I follow, I don’t need a direct message telling me to visit your website because I have already visited it and factored it whether I followed you in the first place. Kristen Nicole touched upon this subject yesterday in her post Selling on Twitter without Being Hated and suggested linking to a personal page :
Admittedly auto-following users that follow me, along with sending auto-DMs helps me save a lot of time when it comes to Twitter maintenance. But abusing these features can ruin your reputation before you’ve gotten your foot in the door. Don’t use either of these features to pitch. Just keep the auto-DMs personal and perhaps redirect them to a link where they can learn more info about you, such as the welcome video I created for my Twitter followers.
I wouldn’t mind being messaged by someone to a personal page where they tell you about who they are. What do you think?
Whilst self promoting your own website is something I don’t have a major issue with, spamming me with some affiliate link to some software or service is a different story. So far I have automatically unfollowed several users because they sent a spam link to me.
Overview
Twitter isn’t perfect but the direct messaging system is one of the most useful features. Though in my opinion, it’s in danger of being unuseable. At the moment I am following about 15-20 people per day so I can only imagine how many messages others are getting, particularly those who are following hundreds of new people a day.
What do you think of Auto Replies?
I don’t like the spammy nature of Twitter, which is part of the reason I don’t promote myself too often. In my opinion, if I promote others instead of myself, it’s looked upon as sharing and I feel better about it.
One thing I have discovered is that maybe direct messages are very useful in keeping some things from Google. I’m just amazed at how quickly Google picks up your Twitter activity. Things I said Sunday are already in Google under my name, and who I replied to.
I realize part of Twitter’s purpose is self promotion, but I think people go overboard. It’s a social network, which to me means, being social. If you went to a party to socialize and all you spoke of was your new venture, your book, your website, your product–how many people at the party are going to want to speak to you? More than likely they’ll go find someone else at the party who is actually fun and lively and I try to use Twitter in that way.
Some of my blogs are set to automatically notify Twitter when I post, but that’s generally the only time I use Twitter for myself. It’s a happy medium for me and I wish a few others would discover that same happy medium for themselves.
Kristen had a very good post on BloggingTips and her welcome video is really nice. She did an excellent job and has a very lovely personality. Maybe she’ll do a video on Twitter etiquette.
Yes I agree. At the moment I have the latest posts from my personal blog and from here posting on Twitter though I moved BloggingTips Updates to it’s own Twitter account.
I tried to do that for here too but someone has hijacked the domain (I’ve complained but Twitter never answer help queries!)
I have to agree with you though. There is way too much self promotion on Twitter. For some people, that’s all it is. How many times have you checked someones profile and saw every tweet had a link to some procut they were pushing.
[...] AUTHOR : Kevin FILED UNDER: Twittering 21 May, 2009 // Last month I spoke about how Auto Replies Are Ruining The Direct Message System, something which I still believe. I rarely check my direct messages box because I get so many auto [...]
[...] have spoke about users are using auto replies to thank people for following them through direct messages, which can make checking for real direct messages a pain. However, this is only a real problem if [...]