When you sign up to follow someone on Twitter you may have noticed that you get a DM (direct message) from them thanking you for the follow. I have no problem with this, honestly I don’t. In fact I do it. I know some people are against it, they think you should respond personally to every person that joins you. Well, when you get hundreds of new followers a day or a week, that’s kind of tough. But here’s what not to do: don’t send me a DM with a link. First off, I realize that we do this in Twitter, that’s fine. When I read your tweet and get to know you and I know you’re not spamming me I’ll gladly click the link, but when we’ve just met and you’re sending me a DM with a link I start to worry that maybe I shouldn’t have followed you.
Don’t assume that just because I followed you that now I’m a fan – I love to see tweets from new people and I love to read what people say, but when you send someone to a link in a DM welcome message it sounds spammy because it is. Don’t start off your Twitter relationship that way. If you want to send a link to your followers wait till they’ve been a part of your trip for a while or do it in a tweet.
Just my opinion…
I hate auto-follow direct messages. They don’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, in fact, to me, they’re a turn off. I’d rather get to know you in the twitterstream, in fact, if you send me an auto follow message, I’m going to be predisposed to ignore your updates.
Not that I have a strong opinion about this or anything 🙂
I know, I am actually toying with getting rid of my auto message now too. But I hate the messages with links. Bad marketing…
Whoops, I’d never thought about that. When someone sends me a thank you for joining, I’ve been adding my link of my Intro to Oprah in my ‘your welcome response’. Yikes. pammyz
Sounds like good advice to me – thanks.
I’ve only recently started to Twitter but as an author felt I ought to – so am glad to get advice. Luckily I haven’t tried to link in a DM.