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Should you DM your Twitter followers with promotional messaging?
I just followed a new company and within minutes received a promotional DM from them with a link to their Facebook page. Is this a best practice for the use of social or simply a form of intrusion marketing.
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10 Answers
No.
Never.
Not ever again for the rest of eternity.
This should never happen and is one of the early uses of Twitter's private messaging system that should have been blocked, destroyed, and reprimanded into oblivion.
Personally I think it should be treated like a date. Don't contact right away. Spend some time learning more about that person then contact them. Normally 24 hours later.
No.. No.. No!
In terms of business use, Twitter is a marketing tool and no more. Don't confuse it with selling tools. You'll annoy your followers.
Twitter is about building relationships not ever about selling.
To a limit extent! Why Not?
If you have something interesting may be in terms of selling point of view, you can use DM. As I am also an online marketer so I do believe in using all the marketing tools that are available here but along with this I do believe not to spam or not miss use them.
This is just depends upon you how you use your resources. Anyway, by this way of DM I have generated lots of business for my previous company. Now I am going to start the same for self. :)
I am building a new Twitter account (for myself this time, long story), and so I am in the process of choosing those I wish to follow. I have received a number of DM's with "thanks for following." A few of them have contained marketing content that has led me to immediately unfollow them. I did some research into the practice of DMing new followers and got what I felt was some sage advice: if you are going to do it, make the DM about them and not about you, as in "Thanks for following. What shall I tweet about you to my followers? DM me and let me know."
Interestingly, while the debate of "do you DM a new follower" appears to be fairly evenly divided between the yesses and the nos, the debate of "do you DM a new follower with your marketing message" leans heavily toward the "absolutely not" side of the house. Having just received a dozen or so, I agree. Don't spam me if I follow you. If you tweet valuable things, I will click on your links all by myself.
You can find me @MarketingSings, by the way. I promise if you follow me, I will not DM you, and I might follow you back. ;-)
I agree with Derek -- I am not a fan of automatic DMs.
Even if you think they have merit, you have to consider how many people are turned off by them and factor that into your decision on whether or not to send them.
Personally, I don't read DMs. So worst case with me, your message will never reach me. But others are much tougher on the issue than I am, and will instantly unfollow you if you send an automated promotional message. Some may even call you out on it publicly. Is that worth it for the impact of an often-ignored and spam-categorized DM? You'll have to decide that for yourself, but I know I won't be sending automated messages any time soon!
No.. No.. No!
In terms of business use, Twitter is a marketing tool and no more. Don't confuse it with selling tools. You'll annoy your followers.
Twitter is about building relationships not ever about selling.
Hello All,
I think it is a good idea to DM followers but they should be personalised based on their interest. Else it will not be far when they will un-follow. I think twitter is a social networking platform and if we can do some selling on top of making relations, why not.
Thanks
Shishank
http://www.shishank.info
This isn't my analogy (can't remember who said it first), but Twitter is like a never ending physical social gathering. Generally speaking, a social gathering is not about hawking your wares.
1. Would you walk into a party, jump on a table and shout out to everyone what it is that you sell and why they should buy from you?
2. Would you mingle at a party by stopping at each individual person and saying "Hi - I've got a great promotion going on. Can I tell you more about it?"
If you answered NO to those questions, then don't do them on Twitter. If you answered YES, then follow suit on Twitter and expect the same kind of reaction you got the last time you did it at a physical gathering.
Using Twitter DM for general marketing messages is just ordinary SPAM and every marketeer in cyberspace ought to know better by now. No difference to e-mail SPAM and the e-mail SPAM laws.
DM is for incidental personal messages and should not be abused for uninvited commercial messages. If you do this in a systematic way then your followers will quickly get annoyed and most likely unfollow you or even block you. Then your hard-won goodwill has evaporated and won't come back easy.
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