Twitter Automation Software – The Best Way To Lose All Your Followers!
by Natalie @BubbleJobs
Social Media automation software has become very popular with businesses and even individuals who feel that they do not have enough time to manage their Social Media presence manually. There are various automation software packages that can be used completely free of charge and many see the use of automation software as being a suitable replacement for a Social media Manager. Why pay a full time salary to have a Social Media Manager to manage your Social Media Accounts when you can use free automation software to add new followers based on keywords you choose, send tweets at pre-determined times and even to send Direct Messages to other Twitter accounts? Well, I shall tell you why… because people unfollow those who are clearly making use of automation software.
Automation software is a great tool for automatically following those that follow you, or scheduling the occasional tweet when you are unable to get onto Twitter for a while. But, it really kills the ‘social’ aspect of Social Media. Now, correct me if you think I am wrong, but surely that ‘social’ aspect is the most important thing?
There is a fine line between the use of Social Media automation software to schedule the occasional tweet and using it to schedule every tweet. A sudden influx of large numbers of tweets containing links to various blog posts, all from the same person generally indicates that they are using some type of automation software. If you were to click on any number of those links, you are likely to find that the blogs have been written across a few months or even years. My favourite example of this came from a self-confessed ‘Social Media Guru’ who had just under 100,000 Twitter followers. In the 12 tweets posted in quick succession, 9 had been written over 3 years prior.
This shows that the account holder was making use of Social Media automation software to post and repost blogs written over many years. Needless to say, I unfollowed this particular Twitter account shortly after realising that this actually occurred every hour, on the hour. A few months later, I also found that the so-called ‘Social Media Guru’ now had less than 50,000 followers. Not surprising really! OK, so some followers decided to hang on in there and continue to follow the account loyally, but how long do you think it will take for the existing followers to become disengaged and unreceptive to the messages the Twitter account was developed to send?
Evidently, you can have as many Twitter followers this Twitter account did, but if you are not adding engaging and interesting information, you are likely to lose your followers very quickly. This demonstrates that the ‘social’ aspect of Social Media is equally as important, if not more important, as the messages about yourself or your business that you want to deliver to your followers. Social Media is about buying into the person who maintains and manages the account and not necessarily the information that they are providing.
Make your content engaging and communicate with people to ensure your follower numbers continue to rise and ultimately, to ensure that you aren’t unfollowed by your loyal following because of your constant stream of automated tweets.
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I agree – I hate the idea that I am being groomed by a robot
Many of the Twitter purists say that it is a sin to auto tweet… but then some folk didn’t like it when we found out the world was round!
I’m not after driving followers on Twitter because I don’t believe that busy people with budgets spend that much time there… I prefer engaging in more fuller conversations on LinkedIn… or better still face to face… someone sent me 3 tweets to say something the other day… forget it!
It seems most Twitter gurus seem to feel that they are interesting when in reality they are soooo not… your man with 100,000 probably has 3 actual listeners and 1 of them is his mum…
I have a great story unfolding of how one of my auto tweets… not one I lined up to push out on Tuesday… but one that happens because someone used a couple of key words in a tweets which prompted my system to go “Hello, you might find this useful…” actually got me engaging with… narr… wait for the full story
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Just be honest about automation!
There is a so-called social media “guru” in Colorado Springs that uses automation, then claims, in the automatic follow-back, that the post is NOT automatic! I got the same exact post from every account I manage that followed him, so I know it’s automatic!
He says something like, “You’re amazing! シ And by the way, this is not an automatic message!”
I un-followed him immediately. I don’t mind an automatic follow back. But why LIE in the post and say it’s not automatic?
If he can lie about that, what else will he lie about? I avoid this guy like the plague!