Bill, In response to your question
http://bit.ly/o9iW
My advice, is try it the free version , you will have to report each auto Tweets daily , that will take a bit of time. Once you got a handle on it in a few days then sign up for the Free Trial of the Professional edition. If you like it and it works for you then it is 30$ a month or just revert back to free version and post messages daily again.
If you cannot make 30$ a month on Twitter then you might try something else.?

I use auto Reply to new followers only. Just a Hi and thx but NO link to anything.

I have not tried the AUTO DM yet but it is very interesting that you can send a mail to your followers just like you would a mail from your list.
Does anyone know how this works ? Does it get read?

Dave

Take notice, I said qualified prospect. If you’re going to use an auto DM with something more than a generic hello, make sure that the people you follow are going to be interested in what you’re offering in your auto DM.

I think using a boring, irrelevant auto DM is worse than using an auto DM that makes an offer or allows the recipient to get to know you better. Auto DMs that push affiliate offers or MLM type of offers are annoying, unoriginal and as worthless as tits on a bull.

I personally use an auto DM that shows my personality and reveals my personal style. The auto DM encourages new followers to watch a video so we can get to know each other better.

The video is created specifically for new twitter and facebook friends and gives people a real taste of who I am and why they would want to follow me and actually read what I have to say. I push the benefits for them of paying attention to my tweets and updates.

In the video I ask my new friends to take a few additional steps to connect with me on a deeper level. Driving people to my facebook/twitter pages, groups and email newsletter. I have found this works really well. For those who don’t like the video, me or the auto DM… I say screw’em.

You have to be willing to turn off some to get others to fully embrace you. Try to please everyone and you’ll be invisible to all.

Jimmy Vee

Super great post. I concur with what you said as well as Denise and Ash. I love twitter and even when someone wants to dm me with a promotion, so be it. I don’t mind. We’re business people with the same agenda… to do business. I say take the one’s that appeal to you and disregard the others. Hiring a VA to handle that for you is also a great option.

Reginas last blog post..Weekly Press Release Planning

Excellent question! So here’s my practice today (hey the world is ever evolving….)

AUTO-FOLLOW – I don’t autofollow. Mainly because I want to know who I’m following. I have found people (non-spammers but definitely marketers) who follow me and then unfollow me if I don’t follow them back in the X amount of days. I understand why they do it. But personally I view it as attention getting. If you truly want to connect and I’m slow in getting back with you (perhaps because I’m working on my business), then @ me on Twitter. When we engage, I prioritize following you over the other new followers because I’ve had a chance to get to know you!

AUTO-DMs – Yes, there’s abuse and yes, it’s odd when you get a DM that is off & even self-serving. My practice of use/non-use has morphed over time as I’ve grown comfortable with my “twitter skin”.
Initially, I auto-DM how honored I was that we’ve connected. And I truly am, because you never know where that connection will lead! Then I decided that I wanted to engage people more. So I appended the DM to ask the follower a question. Tried a couple of different ones and ended up with “What’s your favorite business topic for conversation?” I received interesting and funny responses that allowed me to connect and engage with fabulous people. So if you’re some aerospace mag and you receive my DMs which seems odd to you, then you’d know that I’m focused on biz.
Now I no longer use it after speaking directly with twitterers who have 2K plus followers. They speak to how draining and irritating the Auto-DMs are simply because they receive so many of them. But who knows, I may pick it back up again…

Bottomline, I think the Auto-DMs are appropriate if you’re sending the RIGHT message AND your target audience is the one follow you. Your use or non-use will vary based on Twitter growth both in followers and in building YOUR community on Twitter.

Cheers!

Marian Sparkss last blog post..11 Dynamic Teleseminarians & Entrepreneurs Who Can Help You Grow Your Business If You Let Them

I’m still a relative newbie to social media so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I’m taking an incremental, specific path to increasing both followers and followings, both in the neighborhood of 300 at this time. Yes like the rest of the bandwagon I could follow techniques outlined to increase your followers to 1000 or 10,000, but the numbers mean nothing without knowledge and a plan.

I’m running along in very manual mode, not running with auto-dm’s or auto-follow’s yet. Laboriously manual mode – I first look at a potential’s bio/twitter page and look at the numbers of followers, how many they are following, and the number of tweets. I probably follow 90% of those who find me, my business account. Most of the other look like spam material. 2000 followers and 3 tweets, you know. Or maybe they’re so far off target that it doesn’t make sense.

I will not be able to do this much longer, but I make an effort to read and learn from as many Tweets as possible. I set up a taxonomy for organizing educational tweets into categories – blogging, CMS, Twitter, social media, SEO. Thus for me, at this time, I need to filter out, in advance, what isn’t “relevant”. I’m sure this will change as I get further along, but for now “auto’s” just aren’t happening.

P.S. Regarding the Twitter Power Workshop with Joel Comm last Monday – I hung out in the audience; that was great!

-Bob

I don’t mind people sending me an autoDM when they follow/followback. The numbers are just too large to respond to every follow with a personal message. I don’t use autoDM for any types of promotion, only to say “thanks for following and I’m following you back”…AND I include a my link!
I guess I’m different than most people, in that I don’t mind if people give me a link to their product, service or offer in their autoDM to me when following. I actually appreciate the link, because I want to find out more about them and it makes it easier for me that they have given me the link. So, I treat others how I want to be treated. I have a radio show and I assume that they are following me because they’d like to hear the show. So I give them the link to my show in my auto follow DM.

I don’t take any of it too seriously and I try not to be offended or worried about how other people decide to use twitter.