7 Comments

November 7th, 2008 @2:44 pm  

Definitely not for the idea of a auto-DM. What does that have to do with building a community around you/your blog/whatever you do? How is a thank you meaningful if everyone gets the exact same auto-generated message? Why not just THANK your followers yourself, make it personal? It really does not take much time at all and will mean a lot more to your new follower.

Shooting out an immediate plug isn’t going to win anybody over. Engaging someone on a personal level will.

This is the difference between spikes in traffic and sustainable increase in traffic.

Artists House Musics last blog post..Use The Web: Why Paul Boutin Wants You To "Kill Your Blog"

Jason Said,
November 7th, 2008 @3:05 pm  

I absolutely agree with you Artist – but I am not tied to a computer all day. I am in and out of clients offices / business meetings / etc. There are a lot of people like that too. And the auto-message alleviates the need to track those things..

It’s the same for blog comments. If someone comments on your site, do you really have the time to go through and send them a “Thanks for commenting email?”

In a perfect world, everyone would have a personal assistant to take care of those kinds of tasks. And for the people that have a PA, more power to you. But short of arranging interviews, TweetLater is a viable option.

November 7th, 2008 @3:35 pm  

Jason,

I think that’s a good point. It does become incredibly time consuming to personalize EVERY online communication. My personal experience has been that when I get automated messages, they feel…kind of gross. Like if I called my friend and got an autogenerated answer.

I think this represents a trade off that one has to make online, and again has more to do with whether you are building a long-term community or not. You can automate messages to EVERYONE and hope a small percentage of them care enough to come back or don’t notice its automated. Or you can personalize messages (maybe not all of them) and create actual human connection/interaction.

You took the time to personally respond to my comment, and in a timely way at that! As a reader, it made me feel good. So now I’m subscribed to your RSS. I suppse that is my case in point.

Artists House Musics last blog post..Use The Web: Why Paul Boutin Wants You To "Kill Your Blog"

Jason Said,
November 7th, 2008 @4:26 pm  

You’re absolutely right. In all the stuff I do for work, I try to use automatic type services, but I definitely try to throw in the personal touch here and here.. It really does mean a lot.

The beautiful thing about blogs and comments is that their easy to maintain. In fact, I have an app in my readbag – Moderation (http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/26/moderate-comments-from-your-desktop/) to moderate and reply to comments from your desktop. I’m not using it now, but I should be!

March 23rd, 2009 @9:52 am  

Very good information! Thank you for the helpful video instructions.

ChristianTweets last blog post..Dr. Daisy S. joined a group

Leo A. Said,
May 22nd, 2009 @5:28 am  

This is a really nice post, never knew you could do that.

I will follow anyone and never leave you

Resista Said,
December 6th, 2009 @12:50 am  

I have a site that has news and information about Reggae music. I have about 1990 followers as of today. When I first started out I wish I had this because I manually use to send a message to every one. It really helped me. Most people thought it was a robot.

I got a pretty good amount of traffic from it. The message I sent was very positive maybe that is why it worked.

Thanks for following New Orleans Reggae! Our followers make us smarter http://www.neworleansreggae.com. Link up in Livity. Liven up ya self!

I sent it via DM. I never follow back. It is exactly 140 characters. It isn’t spelled correctly. Maybe that helps.

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