@rich-brooks When I first started using Twitter I signed up for every third party application I could find to automate Twitter.

One such service I used was autoresponding DM’s to every new follower while in the short term it was working to build relationships however, it became spammy quickly. I personally do not reply to DM’s nor use them. 

Personally, I have no sentiments Good or Bad for people using automated DM’s. I just hate people spamming me with marketing hype. If you do I will not be following you. 

@rich-brooks I don’t automate messages in any of the social platformes I am active on, and don’t intend to either. In fact, I don’t respond personally either, it would be too time consuming. To me, there is a different way to say “thanks for following” and that’s by either following back the person, retweeting his or her material, etc.

Having said that, I can’t recall who mentioned this last week, but I recall of someone of uses an automated tweet saying something like “Hey, thanks for following me. This is a bot sending this message, but any future tweets will be from me directly”. I thought it was honest and blunt, yet effective.

Cheers,

Autoresponding DMs are a pet peeve of mine. There’s nothing personal about them and in a social media setting, there’s no point in that. It’s mostly self-promotional garbage. The only decent one I received was a person who suggested others to follow like him, which was a nice share. The rest are in box cloggers.

I agree with @fredericgonzalo . I don’t automate anything – it’s just not the point for me. If I wanted to do a half-assed job, I wouldn’t be on the platforms. I find the DM welcomes to be more annoying and impersonal than anything else. I always have a bunch, and I don’t even really go and read them anymore…

@rich-brooks When I was new to Twitter, I tried an auto-welcome message but quickly discontinued it. I now know followers would rather I RT or respond from the heart. I saw the same DM @fredericgonzalo mentioned and liked it much better than the “now become my FB fan” DMs. 

@rich-brooks Like  @phil_lauterjung I don’t use an auto follow or respond. My numbers are still manageable so I respond to followers with a personal message when I can and block the spammers. I probably should weed out the “empty” accounts too as well as manage my lists better.

I have hit a few autoresponders and it does make me roll my eyes a bit; however, I will usually verify my account. I only follow who I want and not everyone who follows me (maybe about 75% of the time).

Now for my association’s handle, I let anyone follow and we provide no response at this time — at least until I get a better handle on everything.

Wow, thanks guys, this is all a revelation to me. I’ve only just started getting into Twitter properly and am having a great deal of trouble keeping up with all the follows. I hope people don’t think I’m rude if I don’t thank them. I just can’t keep up, but I am trying!

@rich-brooks Like many others here I don’t use auto responders for my twitter feed or for those I handle for the firm I work for. I find that it works better if I reach out to new followers on an individual basis, when appropriate, in an effort to learn more about why they are following our feed and where they found us. 

Then after looking at their feed I decide whether or not it would be beneficial to follow them.

Considering these are tools for building relationships I think there is definitely something to be said for a personal message.