About a year and half ago I wrote a post called “Should You Send an Automated DM to New Twitter Followers?” In case you haven’t read it, I was against it.

Shortly after I wrote that post, the number of automated direct messages (DMs) I received declined. In fact, for several months I received almost no automated DMs. Only DMs from people who wanted to send me, and only me, a private message. Now as much as I would like to take credit for this decline in what is essentially Twitter SPAM, I am sure my post is not the only reason for this.

However, I’m starting to see a rise in automated DMs so I thought I’d revisit the issue.

First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same playing field. What is an automated DM?

A DM (or direct message) is Twitter’s private message service. If you send a DM, only the recipient can see it. This is different from an @reply (an “@” symbol in front of someone’s Twitter user name) which is public. For example if you put @andreastenberg in your Twitter message, everyone can read that message but the @andreastenberg let’s me know you meant that message for me or were talking about me in some way.

An automated DM is different. There are a number of tools that let you automatically follow people who are following you. These same tools often will allow you to automatically send a DM to anyone who starts to follow you. Now on the surface, this sounds like a good idea. If you’re using Twitter to market yourself or your business, why not automate things to make it easier?

Well, another term for social media is social networking. And I’m sorry to say, you can’t automate your networking. You need to put in the time.

Let me show you some examples of what’s in my DM folder right now. Please note, the names/links have been blocked out to protect the innocent (and not so innocent). Read More→