Have you ever followed a person or a company on Twitter and received a “Thanks for the follow, here’s our website” direct message from that “person” in response? Does that feel like an authentic voice or a pre-recorded message? Is this a business practice that you want to adopt for your first social outreach to a new contact?
Social media has enabled business to see first-hand what consumers are saying about them and to directly address, engage and captivate them. Yes, captivate. The practice of sending an automated response to a Twitter follower (or anyone who engages with your business through a social account) is contrary to what social media is about! To many consumers that are using social media, these automated responses are red flags; they signal that the business is focused on marketing to them rather than talking with them. The business has lost them at first touch.
Think about the last time you sent an email to a company and received an automated response. While it was nice to know that your message was received, did you glow with satisfaction? Putting that into a social context, is that the first impression you want to give to a current or potential customer? Social channels are about fostering open and direct communications with people. While the interesting content that you’d like to share with people is a great candidate for “scheduled” outbound communications, make sure your first interaction with someone is real, live and personal. You’ll begin to set the stage for a trusted, positive relationship.
I agree with you about the direct message auto reply stuff on twitter. I have been a user of twitter for personal and business use for quite a while now (@MatthewTNelson, @FirstTracksNH) and I NEVER respond to the auto DM’s I get from people when I follow them and many time I will Unfollow them if was kind of on the fence to begin with.
What I am curious about from your prospective here is requesting Validation from a follower. I started using a service that sends out a message to everyone that follows me that asks them to please verify that they are the real deal first because I have been getting more junk as of late, and it seems to be working pretty good. What are your feelings about that? Worth it? Creating too much of a barrier?
Is requesting validation from a follower a barrier for a business to spur engagement? Yes. Is SPAM a growing problem for people who hold social accounts? Yes.
If you think about how validation is used today in other channels (email, mobile, etc.), it’s mainly to ensure that people are opting in to receive your promotional communications. The same standard of validation should be used to sign people up to receive promotional messages via social channels. There is a huge difference between a person following you on Twitter versus opting in to your promotional messages. In the former, they have just “tuned in” to your public broadcast. They are interested in what you have to say, the brands/products/company/market/capabilities you represent in some way. You have the choice of whether you would like to engage them further (follow back, DM, @message), but there’s no further requirement for you to validate their identity. Would you ask a person to validate their identity to view your website? Your videos on YouTube? A spammer doesn’t need to be a follower to @message you or to view your public tweets. Additionally, validation requests may be seen as automated and annoying as robotic “thank you” DMs on Twitter.
In latter case where you do want permission to send DMs, email newsletters, mobile coupons or the like to someone, it’s highly advisable to validate the contact information given to you before you and follow best-practices guidelines and laws for permission-based marketing.
You’re post here needs to go just a “little” further to hook me. You get so close to saying exactly how you can offer this level of attention to prospects but you don’t tell us how. Please say a little more about what a potential interaction may be like.
The potential interaction between you and someone who has expressed interest in you should be both personal and conversational rather than “robotic.” Let’s take Twitter as an example. Quickly look at the profile of the person who followed. See if there’s an affinity with your business, a location, something in their posts and fire off a quick, friendly intro and a comment on what they’re interested in (that intersects with your business), a resource they can use, a link to more information, something that helps them, a probing question, etc. Try to make your first interaction about them instead of about you. Does that help?