Since joining Twitter, I have received 153 Direct Messages from other people who have followed me. I’d say about 5 of those messages are personally customized to me. The rest feature such rich and captivating conversation-starters as:

“Thank you for the follow!”
“Add me on Facebook as well!”
“I look forward to connecting with you!”

Oh, I know. You’re thinking, “Come on. It’s not like I can do customized responses to EVERYONE who follows me.”

That’s true. You probably can’t be that customized to everyone and you shouldn’t be anyway. If anything, you should just not do these fake, insincere automatic responses to people who follow you.

Why? Because auto-responses merely reinforce the fact that you didn’t take the time to get to know that person. You’re just popping in for a token “Thank You” before you try to amass the most Followers. Not really true, you say? Well, like it or not, that’s the message you’re sending with this simplest of gestures.
I will be the first to say that I don’t respond directly to everyone who follows me, even the most worthy of followers, with a customized message. Which is why I don’t do it at all. To some, this auto-respond mechanism can be so much of a turn-off that they “Unfollow” users who employ this technique. Does that sound like it’s worth the risk to you?

If you really want to show your appreciation to those who follow you – the ones you find most interesting, that is – then engage them in conversation. That’s kind of the point of this Twitter thing: To converse and interact. It’s not a race to see who gets the most Followers. It’s a race to see who gets the most meaningful exchanges. Maybe we’ll never be able to truly tally that statistic, but who cares?

Or, if you want to be immediate in your appreciation with a “thank you,” then imagine how much you’ll stand out with a true, unmanufactured response. The kind of response that the person knows came from you getting to know them.

For example, Melodie9964, who tweets on behalf of Piper Restaurant, took the time to craft this simple message:

“Thanks for following Piper Restaurant. I liked the ‘Don’t Discount Your Brand’ blog post.”

One sentence after her initial “thank you” sentence showed me she’d taken the time to get to know me by visiting my blog site. If you can’t craft one customized sentence toward someone once they follow you, don’t do it at all. It’s that simple.

The sales expert Tom Hopkins has often said that one of the most effective tools in sales is a good old fashioned “thank you” note after a first meeting. Sincere, honest and from the heart.

If you were honest with yourself, would you say any of those qualities belong to your automatic responses on Twitter or elsewhere?

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