What is it with Twitter autoDMs lately? I’ve never seen so much spam, have you? Like we’re not busy enough, now we have to wade through even more junk?
Well, I’m not gonna take it anymore!
Let’s deconstruct:
The Annoying Ones
1) TrueTwit Validation: Really. A bot to confirm if I’m a bot? No, honey. Just no.
I’ve contacted TrueTwit to find out specifically how they work, and they’re selling people a bill of goods that makes no sense. If you sign up with them to make sure all your followers are real (and come on, is it that difficult?), they won’t bother you with getting more validations. So to not get something, you have to sign over your account to provide spam to us. Now call me crazy, but … what? They also tweeted kind of a smarmy reply in response to my question, which doesn’t endear me to them either.
Mostly, I dislike this service because it’s disrespectful of our time to ask us to confirm that we’re real people. And it’s kind of indicative of what type of tweeter you are (or are not): hands off, automated, uninvolved.
So if you have it, stop it. Get out. Run away.
2) JustUnfollow: This is a free follow/unfollow tool. The problem is this: whenever you follow somebody who uses it (and you don’t know until you do), you get a spammy DM requesting you click on a link (always dangerous) to follow or unfollow people. Um, can’t we do that anyway without clicking on an unknown link?
The Helpful Ones:
1) ManageFlitter: With this free service, you can unfollow people by category (nonfollowbacks, eggs, fakes, inactives, nevertweeteds) who let’s face it, aren’t helping you at all. Dump em. And remember, once you get to following 2,000, Twitter imposes a 10% following to follower ratio limit. What does that mean? If you follow 2,000, you have to have 2020 followers or you cannot follow more people. Unless you get rid of the chaff, that is! I use ManageFlitter almost daily since my account is large, but I also use it to effectively build followers in a targeted way for myself and my clients.
2) Pluggio: Deserving of its own blog post, this fabulous application (free for up to 5 accounts) helps you to follow, unfollow, schedule posts, find relevant articles to your keywords, check RTs, analytics, and so much more. I use a combination of these two applications (along with Hootsuite) and find this combo works best for my clients.
What are your thoughts on autoDMs such as these? Please share below!
