Automated Twitter DM’s Are Trash – Here’s Why
So, your friend wants to set up automated Direct Messages on their Twitter account. Do us all a favour and show them this article – after you finish face-palming, of course.
If you’ve followed smaller musicians on Twitter lately, chances are you’ve run into automated, robotic messages they’ve programmed to send out to everyone. I know I’m not the only one to be annoyed; so, here are a couple of reasons why I think they’re a bad idea.
Note that I come from a musician background, and now work on the media side. I interact with artists on and offline everyday, and tend to prefer the one with classy attitudes, regardless of their musical genre.
I already know you!
In school, almost all my classmates are musicians to some degree, which is pretty great. What isn’t pretty great is when I finally realize they have Twitter, hit that follow button, and then get an automated DM explaining that they’re a singer-songwriter from Ottawa, Canada. Like yeah, we’ve sat next to each other for six months, and you treat me like I’m a stranger.
Imagine you walked into your favourite little Mom’n’Pop store, and they treat you like you’ve never been in each time, no matter how much you spend or how good a conversation you had with the sales clerk. That’s the feeling people get when automated DM’s are sent to their friends.
You’re trying to sell me something the first time we meet!
Signing up for Twitter doesn’t involve pulling out one’s credit card. People go there to have fun, make connections and curate interesting content. Think about it, if you were at a party, and right after introducing yourself to someone they made a hard sales pitch, how would you feel about them?
The classiest social media users treat their followers like friends. Friends don’t hard sell in the first conversation.
You’re making it look like you don’t care about me!
The most important thing to know about social media is that it’s social. Users who only make announcements about themselves won’t feel the same amount of happiness and reap the same rewards as those who make genuine conversation with their followers.
Instead of greeting new followers with “Hi, I’d like to get to know you,” artists with automated DM’s that push their other social media links come off as really self-centred. Some artists put timers on their DM’s to only send a few hours later, we naturally strike up a conversation, and then they warn me to ignore the messages about to come. What was the point, then?
To conclude my little rant, the greatest thing about social media is the ability to make fans feel special without even leaving your house. Impersonal, sees pitch DM’s aren’t classy, and they make fans feel like a number. Tell your friend not to install them.
Stay Colourful,
Clarence