Why I Auto Follow and Direct Message on Twitter

In a follow-up to Mark’s post yesterday on whether to follow or not to follow on Twitter, and what criteria you use to determine whether to follow someone, I thought I would share the Twitter strategy I have been using for the past year. I do two things that some people in the Twitter world consider a no-no. I auto follow everyone who follows me back, and I send an automated direct message to those who follow me using Social Oomph, a free service.

Why the Automated Strategy?

A week or two ago, I was asked on Twitter why I didn’t send a personalized greeting publicly to my new followers. I’m not trying to brag by any means, but I get anywhere from 10 to 60+ followers a day, with exception to the 7th where I only got 3 followers. Needless to say, it would be tough to check out all my new followers on a daily basis and reply to each of them.

Direct Messages

So, instead of replies, I go with direct messages. I alternate the DM’s regularly. For a few months leading up to Blog World, I asked new followers if they would be attending the event, and received several responses from people who were attending who I later got to meet, which was exciting.

My current direct message is a simple: “Thanks for following! Do you have a question about blogging, social media, or search marketing? Please let me know!”

The responses have been pretty good recently, with several people daily taking me up on the offer and asking questions. These questions have usually required 3 – 4 DM answers, and one I invited to email me because it was a lot more in-depth. So anyone who asks gets a personal answer, and the knowledge that while I automate a portion of my responses, I back them up with personalization as well.

The bonus for me? Several of these questions are going to lead to great post topics!

Auto Following

The auto following ties directly into the direct messaging, as people cannot message someone if that person is not following them. Aside from just the initial DM contact, I have a lot of great interaction with people I have been following for awhile through DM, which wouldn’t be possible if I wasn’t following them. Also, I have received several messages that I was happy people chose to DM me about instead of publicly tweeting, such as the times when my website was hacked or when someone was sending a link to a site scraping my content (definitely don’t want those guys to get any public tweets for being jerks).

Twitterfeed

My other automated strategy is executed through Twitterfeed, which allows me to automatically share blog posts from sites I like on Twitter. There are sites out there that hands down come out with nothing but great content, and for those, I feel no need to review the content before I send it out to my followers. It allow me to maintain a consistent Twitter presence, even when I’m not able to tweet. And I know it is appreciated, because I will see retweets of those posts by my followers.

Occasionally, (under five times in the last six months) I have gotten some feedback from people who didn’t like a post from a particular site. At that point, I will review the site to see if their content is heading down south, or whether it was just a particularly cranky follower, and make the decision whether to cut that site from my auto feeds or put them on probation. Ultimately, I end up reading all of the content I tweet out automatically, because I use it as a source for my Friday roundups.

Does it Hurt?

Now an explanation for the chosen thumbnail for this post. Does my follower to following ratio balance hurt my Twitter rankings? Not from what I can tell. I currently have a 60 Klout rating and a 100 on Twitter grader. I would say, in terms of Klout, having the Twitterfeed is an advantage as it makes sure my Twitter is being updated with content that people want to retweet, leading to more mentions of my username.

Who Do I Really Follow?

The way I sort my following is through Twitter lists. I have lists for Twitter users who tweet about SEO, social media, blogging, etc. I have personal lists for people I know in real life. I have local lists for those in my area, such as my Arizona bloggers list. I have also been playing around with several Formulists that have proven to be helpful in checking out new followers, seeing who has recently unfollowed me, finding more local followers, and so on.

The Downside

So of course, with any strategy, there are some cons. Being an auto follower means that I get targeted by spam accounts who are just looking to build their follower base by following, getting followed back, and then unfollowing. I periodically flush my following, looking for people who aren’t following me that I don’t recognize, haven’t tweeted in a long time, or have no gravatars. Also, the auto following leads to a nice amount of direct message spam.

But with what I do get from valuable interaction from others via direct messages, I have to say that the cons in this case definitely do not outweigh the pros. It may change in the future, but for the last year, it has been working just fine. And if Chris Brogan can manage it with 160K following, I certainly can with only 10% of that.