Like many of you, I use Twitter. (@chriswebb) I use it for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional but have always thought of it as a very ‘personal’ tool. By that I mean it’s an ecosystem of *people* that despite the distance and in some cases, anonymity, relate to each other. It is a social tool – I mean it is called “social media” for a reason.

But I am seeing a trend among several users who are opting for an automated response to everyone who follows them. For example, today I got the following warm-hearted response from someone I followed:

“Thanks for following me! Find GREAT Real Estate deals w/my E-Book (link omitted)”

Wow, how…personal.

So, do I respond personally to everyone who follows me on Twitter? No. But I also don’t send some impersonal canned response either. Instead, I’ll choose to actually engage you in conversation at some point using the tool. That’s the point, isn’t it? Just using Twitter and other tools like it as just another channel to send the same spammy messages one might use in other media is completely missing the point.

The same goes for Authors who use social tools as part of their personal platforms to help support their books. I encourage you to use tools like Twitter – in fact it is becoming more important that you do just that. But use the tools in the way they were meant to be used.

Why not just tweet a simple welcome to new followers?  Maybe 5 or so at a time?  At least then people know you are actually doing it and not relegating it to some cold, automated script. If you can’t manage that for some reason, then just skip it.  I’d rather see nothing than an autoreply.

Do you use an automated, canned response for your Twitter followers?

Bacn? Seriously?

I first saw the term earlier today when I read a Tweet from Chris Brogan and it seems to be growing like a virus. See? It has already spread to this blog!

This is meme run amok. We don’t need a new word for email that’s sort of important. It’s not quite spam, but not something I can just delete right now – it’s Bacn?

Come on. This is not serious is it? Really?

Moving on…

Photo credit, Lucid_Nightmare