This is a follow up to I’m On Twitter, Should I Be Using An Auto Responder?

Personally I genuinely am interested in hearing from my twitter followers and want to at least send them some sort of contact when they follow me, but because I get quite a few new followers everyday it would be quite time consuming to DM them all, so I use an Auto Response (AR). If you want to set one up the easiest place is at TweetLater.

Twitter Auto-Responses are helpful to manage your twitter as it grows. However if you do it wrong they may actually be stunting your growth. Any ”X Reasons Why I Will Unfollow You” article is never complete without at least mentioning ARs. Here are but a few examples of AR in these posts:

One reason I often consider unfollowing someone is when I receive an automatic direct message asking me to be a Fan of theirs on facebook. Self-aggrandization much?

“You use auto DMs” It  shows that the person lacks even the most remedial understanding of “conversation” and “community.”

As I proposed in the I’m On Twitter, Should I Be Using An Auto Responder? post, it’s not the AR that’s the problem, its that people don’t know how to use them. So here is how you write an Auto-Response that doesn’t get you unfollowed:

Number One Rule – Dont Sell!

Your auto-response is your first communication with a new follower. Nobody likes to be sold to and especially by someone they don’t even know! If your DM has any self promotion or sales offers you are pretty much saying “Thanks for following. I am here is to make money off you. Stay tuned for my further attempts to make money off you, I mean tweets :-D” (and no a smiley face wont get you forgiven).

Keep it casual, you just met.

Be Genuine

90% of people will know that it’s an automatic response so don’t try and fool them.

Questions?

Some people put questions in their AR to start the conversation with new followers. 90% of people will know the question isn’t a sincere one so if you use one make sure it’s written appropriately. The reason you started using ARs was to save time and if all your followers are replying to your question you just increased your work. IMO (in my opinion) questions are out of the question. Too tricky to pull off and too much work if you do.

Hyperlinks

A good way to get people clicking through to your blog is adding a hyperlink in your AR. However as soon as you see a hyperlink in a DM your spam flag is raised. My approach is just to add the link to the end of my AR. This way if people are interested they can easily click the link, but I have no selling so it is totally opt-in.

What do you think? What’s the best/worst AR you’ve received?