Sonny Gets Arrested
People generally prefer to interact with other people rather than machines. And most folks are especially not keen on interacting with machines masquerading as people.
Ever get frustrated by an automated phone tree when trying to contact a business and feel like screaming, “I just want to talk to a person!“?
Robocalls were big in the news leading up to this past election. You know. Those recorded calls that just start talking at you as soon as you answer the phone.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a political candidate or a credit card sales pitch, I hang up on ‘em without listening.
Autoresponders
In email marketing there is a thing called an autoresponder. The most basic form is the email you get when you first subscribe to a list.
There are some very real benefits to email autoresponders. For starters, they help ensure that you really meant to subscribe to that list. In that capacity they help keep spam down a bit.
Another benefit is that you don’t have to wait to get the information you signed up for with email autoresponders. No matter what time, day or night, you can have access with a good autoresponder system.
One reason why email autoresponders work so well is that we don’t have the expectation that the sender is sitting by their email just waiting for us to sign up to their list. The automation helps us out as recipients as well as making life easier on the sender.
It’s a win-win and I am a fan.
Social Media is Different
Social media sites like Twitter, for example, have a different expectation. They are by their very nature more personal than email. That’s the “social” part.
Twitter is immediate. You can send a tweet from anywhere on your cell phone, or from any internet connection.
Because it is so easy to use these sites from most anywhere, because they are so personal, and because the messages are so short (how long can it take to type in a 140 character message?), people expect when they see a tweet it means the person is really there.
Enter the Social Media Autoresponders
Unfortunately there are some folks who don’t understand that social media is about people first and foremost. Those folks turn to services like TweetLater to send auto-generated “welcome” tweets.
TweetLater has some good features but I don’t think this is one of them.
They even acknowledge that it might be a bit distasteful on their FAQ page:
Isn’t automation a little impersonal?
Some folks are bound to see it that way. Others don’t see it that way. The automation features of TweetLater are intended as time-savers for you, enabling you to be polite to your new followers without it consuming a lot of your time. You can’t please all the people all the time, and that’s true for any kind of automation, not only the TweetLater automation.
Seems like a bit of a cop out answer to me. Automation is by definition impersonal. The real question is whether it is distasteful or not. Besides, it’s not the automation that drives most people buggy. It’s the automation masquerading as a person that chafes folks.
Trouble is, this particular feature is specifically designed to impersonate the personal. From their very next FAQ:
Should I send DMs or public tweets as welcome messages?
Our recommendation is to always send DMs. You will annoy your followers if you constantly have auto welcome public tweets in your timeline.
Yeah. But let’s not talk about annoying your followers by using very personal channel for an impersonal automated message. Sheesh!
And from a Squidoo Lens that talks about using TweetLater on Twitter:
Make your autoresponder message very folksy, very human, very non-business like. Make is so anyone reading it thinks you typed it personally at the moment.
I want to scream, “Missing the Point!”
For those of you who don’t know, DMs are private Direct Messages that can be sent via Twitter. And again it is about expectations.
If you send me a DM, I expect that it is because you have something fairly important to tell me. Otherwise you would have used Twitter’s @ function to reply to me. (Of course if you did that then everyone would see you are using a machine to send out automated replies and they would be less likely to follow you in the first place – that’s the real answer to the second FAQ above.)
I also expect that you are actually there when you DM me so you can (and probably will) respond to my reply DM.
I’m what I guess you could call a mid-level Twitter user. I opened my account a bit over a year and a half ago. I’ve got a little over 1500 followers and I’ve sent something over 6200 tweets in that time.
And during that time I’ve gotten exactly 500 DMs as of this writing. (Round numbers are so satisfying.) They’re mostly private back channel conversations that I’ve had with various members of the Twitter community. Though more and more these days they include one off messages that read something along these lines, “Thanks for the follow. Be sure to check out my blog, url.com” Blah, blah, blah.
Initially I would respond to these “folksly, non-business like massages” that seemed to be “typed personally at the moment” DM’s thinking that the person who sent them was, um, a person.
Rarely if ever do I get a response back when I do.
How Effective Is It Really?
When that happens I am very tempted to unfollow the non-person. As a reference I refer you to my post from a while back, the Top 9 Reasons I’m Not Following You on Twitter.
If the point of the social media autoresponder is to either A) make me feel welcome, or B) get me to subscribe to your blog, then I have to ask how effective is it? I mean really.
Robots don’t make me feel very welcome. In fact, they make me feel like you are too busy (or too lazy) to really care about me. As a result I feel less welcome than if you’d done nothing. I mean I get that you’re busy. We all are.
And truth be told, my feed reader has too many feeds in it already. A bot response to me following you doesn’t help you there either.
Actually there is a very good chance that if I found your Twitter account interesting enough to follow in the first place I probably already clicked through to check out the web site you have listed in your Twitter profile. If I liked it then I subscribed already.
That’s because I’ve got at least a passing interest in you as a person and what you’re all about.
It is, after all, social media.
If you’d like, feel free to follow me. (But only if you are a person, please.) I promise not to send you an automated DM asking you to read my blog.
I agree 100% with you. I’ve been Tweeting about this very thing lately, as I’ve been getting a lot of auto-DMs, same nature as yours. Many are from affiliate marketers who are reading how-to posts and manuals like “how to get 2000 followers in 30 days”. But is this really going to drive traffic and results? Not from the likes of me and you, that’s for sure, and many others who are active on social media for the very reasons you clearly spell out.
I’m on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/BrickandClick (and you won’t get an auto DM from me if you follow me)
Yeah, Jeff. Though I’m not sure how sending an auto DM after they’ve followed you is supposed to get you more followers…
Perhaps we could start a 12 step program for these folks. I can hear it now. “Hello. My name is @ChrisCree and you won’t get an auto DM from me if you follow me.”
There is a time and place for autoresponders. I think sometimes people get carried away with all the possibilities they forget the purpose of the original feature and what it was intended to do in the first place.
Good article, thanks.
Oh dear! I’m not using an autoresponder, but whenever I accept a new follower, I send a hand-typed, but rather generic DM along the lines of, “Thanks for the follow – look forward to tweeting with you.” I guess I better start getting a little more creative and personal, huh? I don’t ever send a URL or try to sell anything in an initial response though. I don’t like the follow DM’s that say, “Hi, please visit my website and buy my e-book” (with a link).
Thanks for this informative article (that’s me talking, not a robot – LOL)
Wish I’d written that
You are so right. Of course, there are some people who just won’t get it. I responded to one guy the other day and told him how distasteful I found these “check out my blog (url)” auto messages. He replied cheerfully to the effect that yeah he understood how I felt but it worked. So do Dodgy Brothers & Sons sneaky used car sales techniques. Whatever happened to self-respect?
iRobot yaa!
Social media is becoming increasingly improtant to t he success of business. Online marketing is revolutionising the way businesses market their products and services. Today social media goes hand in hand with SEO and is an important focus of any successful marketing strategy.
I agree and think that auto-responders for things like Twitter defeat the whole purpose of Twitter.
Thanks Chris. I have had similar experiences. I have struggled with the same thing as Marti commented on. I like to make an initial contact as well with new followers by trying to be welcoming without being too fake in the “folksy” category. I try to look at the follower’s credentials and comment on something personal to their site, blog, or recent tweet. That drives home for them that I am real and actually interested in them.
I don’t think any reasonable person would have an issue with an actual personal welcome. I know I especially appreciate them and make it an effort to respond to as many of them as possible.
I used to respond to all welcome messages on Twitter but eventually I figured out some of them were, um, less than sincere. The downside is that I have gotten slack on the sincere ones.
Des, That’s a good question. I know they use them “because they work”. I guess it just depends on what your end goal is.
Personally I wonder if people think they work because they are a little on the lazy side so that it appears like they “gain” when they do some automated thing instead of the mostly nothing that they were doing before. I don’t know.
I am using sodial media to build traffic and links to my site and have fount it to increase page rank very well/
Thank you! That is exactly how I’ve felt and the autoresponders really just started up recently – or at least that I’ve noticed. And when the DM says here’s my site please subscribe, I feel the same way – yes, I visited your site, liked what I saw and that’s why I decided to follow you, but thanks for reminding me again. I’ve even gotten them from people who haven’t followed back.
I guess if you are following or being followed by thousands at the same time it is difficult to add something personal but it really makes a difference. Yesterday someone sent me a dm after following and referenced the haiku I wrote for the contest at Copyblogger. That makes a much bigger difference in my wanting to interact than a generic sales pitch.
Thanks for reminding us that people will complain about anything! I really don’t care if someone sends me an automated welcome message when I follow them. It doesn’t make me think more or less of them.
It’s sad if people are getting upset because someone says “thanks” to them. Why does it matter if that message is automated?
Excellent article. I completely agree. I think one of the differences between automated phone calls and automated email is the voice. There is something more personal about voice than email that it feels almost like an insult when we are spoken to by something that isn’t human.
In addition, I think that we’ve built a stigma against anyone trying to sell us anything, either with a real person or a robot. So, when we get a message from someone that isn’t human and they can’t even both to talk to us personally, it’s a double whammy.
One of the reasons I think we are okay with automated emails is because we are used to the Internet being a bit impersonal, since we’ve all been reading static web pages for years, so it isn’t that much different. Also, the automated messages that aren’t spam are usually invited messages. Automated phone messages are almost never invited.
Hi Chris,
I’m the owner of TweetLater.
TweetLater is about convenience and saving time. Nothing more and nothing less.
What difference does it make whether I welcome my followers via a hand-crafted message, or via an automated message?
The point is: I decided that I appreciate new followers enough to want to welcome them. It does not mean I want to or am going to automate all my interaction with them.
I’m a firm believer that the real value of Twitter lies in who you follow, and not in who follow you or how many follow you. If automation can free up time for me to spend on learning from those I follow, then I will automate repetitive tasks as much as I can.
To be honest, if you ask me, I think a storm around automated welcome messages is nothing more than a storm in a teacup.
Best regards,
Dewald Pretorius
To be honest, Chris. I always have a strange feeling about the autoresponder, and I was wondering, “Is there any real people/webmasters in the back of the autoresponder?” As I heard many of the autoresponders were left unmoderated, once the webmasters have setting up the sites!
I have to agree (to an extent). I appreciate a response, be it auto or personal – much more than if I had no response at all. Of course a personal response is much nicer, but this is the web we are dealing with and you have to remember that we aren’t (all) here to make friends and make people feel good. At the same time I do like getting a personal response, and given the choice of following one over the other, I would go for the one who spent the time to respond themselves.
I just joined Twitter and I’m addicted already. lol But, for those who are hoping to use it for marketing purposes only really are missing the point. The social part really seems to help build more relationships and establish trust for your business.
Some marketers are really terrific at using autoresponders. I’ve received some emails that had me glancing at the “from” email address and trying to figure out if they’re sending me a direct “personal” email message or sending a message to me as a part of their group. But, for the most part, many autoresponder messages are pretty impersonal.
I guess it’s all a question of numbers. If you’re good at using the autoresponder without making it seem impersonal then you can target several times the amount of people you would be able to personally. I certainly appreciate well thought out response, even if it might be from an autoresponder. Lets face it, if you weren’t using an autoresponder you’d probably be using cut and paste quite a lot instead.
I do use tweetlater. It’s convenient and saves time.
But I don’t autofollow and neither do I want to get tons of followers.
What I want is to try and establish a relationship. Even at the moment someone follows me and I’m not aware of it or don’t have the time at that moment to react. Hence tweetlater.
My message is a simple thank you and a link to download an outstanding report that followers can implement immediately and give away too.
Of course I will profit from that too if they use it, so I thought that’s a great start to establish a relationship, don’t you think so?
Case
PS
To save you the follow, just click my name and you’ll get to the landing page.
Ah, missed that. This is the right link:
http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/twitter.php
Great topic to post on! I’ve often thought about this, as I’ve seen it being used more often by Twitter users. Twitter auto-responders make about as much sense as Twitter Ads do. This isn’t broadcast, it’s a conversation. We’re talking to people! Well said Chris.
@kenburbary
I use an autoresponder on Twitter to state that I do not auto-follow, @ me to be heard. I just want to make it clear that I don’t follow everyone that follows me.
I don’t want to miss an informative post from someone because I’m filtering through garbage.
I get confused when I receive a follow, then I follow back, and then I get an auto-responder thanking me and asking me to visit their site.
Halleujah praise the lord, somebody who feels the same way I do!
The worst thing is when people (huge Twitter users)
If I wanted to follow a robot, I’d have followed the Twitter of the Mars Phoenix Lander, lord knows it has more personality than some people on Twitter.
@livetech
Sorry, some of my comment got lost.
Second paragraph should read like this:-
“The worst thing is when people (huge Twitter users and ‘Twitter experts’) are telling people to be more personal on their feeds. I mean, how stupid can people be by just using twitter to peddle their e-books and blog posts constantly?”
Autoresponders for Social Media does grab some traffic but they are not targeted. But it’s a good attention grabber as people do click on your links simply out of curiosity
I don’t use Twitter, but this TweetLater application seems like it could be helpful in certain situations. From a marketing perspective, it is always better to be personal, and I don’t think TweetLater should be used extensively. If you automate too much of your life, you lose what makes you human.
That’s a good point actually – autoresponders can be a great tool to give people who just click out of curiosity a bit more info on you, your site, your product etc and could entice people back later.
Thanks for good articles! I alos use SMO for increase page rank and additional traffic to my saits.
I agree with people not particularly liking auto responders, and that people really don’t want to talk with a machine. I remember how angry my parents would get when they had to talk on the phone to a machine, email is no different. Thanks for this great article.
i usually don’t like autoresponders responding, though if it’s like a welcome note that’ll just be ok. It’s like an answering machine while you’re not there to talk or tweet back.
Thank you for sharing this information. Honestly I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way. We’re all so used to having things automated and easy. Sometimes the old school business principles are still relevant. I grew up hearing stories from my mom about how my Grandpa ran his little corner store. Great wisdom I still use today.
Blessings,
Christina
I think autoresponders are very useful, and if they are used properly and responsibly, they shouldn’t make anyone feel like they are not treated right.
an automated welcome may be better than no welcome at all.
I suppose it depends on the type of person you are and just how thankful you are for the follows.
I find that using an auto responder by telling them it’s an auto responder works really well. For instance, “This is an auto message to say thank you, and I will give you a proper welcome as soon as I’m able.”
I don’t think ANYBODY would feel slighted at that. But I do agree, there are times when they should never be used!
Ok, so I’m a bit confused about Tweeter. It’s only real time if you happen to be there right? Isn’t this similar to a mass produced IM?
I have a Tweeter profile, but I’m not sure why, so it just sits.
This is a really good post on Autoresponders, something that is still fairly new to me. Thanks for the post!
Tis true. Most of the big, successful companies have some form of autoresponders when people sign up for something or make a purchase. They are, indeed, a vital thing to have.
-Jack
Ya its correct that auto responders create problems but I believe that they are productive in generating traffic too. I use SMO for my sites to generate traffic.
This Autoresponder is about to go to a whole new level (or low) as Tweetlater has released premium functionality that will allow you to broadcast DMs. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Twitter has given us access and opportunity to talk with thought-leaders and like minded people in a non threatening, non invasive way that gives us all 140 characters to be seen and heard but more importantly to listen and to learn from the community conversations.
I’m concerned that the new found openness will disappear as sorting through our DMs becomes a time vampire due to spam.
I don’t mind so much when a machine answers when I call someone, unless I want something it can’t help me with. What I hate, as you mentioned, is when a machine calls me. Until their sentient, no machine should call me unless I ask it to.
I had an Auto responder on my business mail for a little bit. I turned it off. The main reason is I personally hate talking to machines and always wonder when I receive an auto response if anyone will actually read my message.
No, to me auto responders are to impersonal, I think it better to email in person even if it is not immediate. When you do email your recipient will know it is a person and will have the peace of mind that the real person is taking care of them. That is good for business. Being impersonal is bad for business.
I totally agree with this. EVERYONE hates automated calls and phone trees, so why would ANYONE think that a someone trying to interact with you on a social site would appreciate an automated message? Still, I don’t blame the creators of TweetLater, just the people who use it. You know?
True. very true. its so frustrating speaking to a damn machine..automated service……and that too you have to wait 2 minutes to get there sometimes….nothing like hearing the voice of a person( or lady
at the other end.
I am with you on this. For me the term social means it’s a network of humans and these robots actually should not be there. Every of us want to talk to a human rather then a machine. When you receive a personal message from some one that actually makes you happy and gives you a feel of being social.
I agree, however there’s always going to be people with varying opinions on this, so I find it’s just best to accept things as they are.
autoresponders has completely surpassed our expectations. If you ever have any stubborn people like me, have them call me. To be honest you cannot beat the services or the people that I have dealt with.
im looking for a nice free autoresponder for my wordpress blog. Anyone here know where to get one?
You are 100% right in saying that Social Media is Different.I have just experienced it myself that how good response you get from it and can benefit your online business.
I don’t quite get twitter. I think the only people who are on twitter, with some exceptions, are those who trying to exploit it. I have over 600 followers yet have left less than 50 updates.