#endautoDM

One of the most important things to remember when orchestrating a social media program is to keep it personal. The same way consumers largely reject traditional advertising, they are also turned off by being blindly marketed to on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

I had a conversation a few weeks ago with my good friend @rdeal1 about how important this is and it led to us lamenting about how sick we were of following someone on Twitter and immediately being bombarded with an automatic direct message encouraging us to check out their website or blog. It’s a huge pet peeve of mine, and I know I’m not alone.

The end result of the conversation was a new crusade to end this practice, centered around the #endautoDM hashtag. We decided that we would start to propagate this idea through word-of-mouth on Twitter, and politely encourage people that auto direct message to abandon this practice.

So how is it working? The word has spread like wildfire—blogs have been written, reputable industry players have started talking about it, and many, many influential people on Twitter have begun to spread the #endautoDM love, including a high-profile member of the Dell social media team. You can see some of the chatter on Twitter search, HERE.

If you’re a Twitter participant, please help us to spread the word. If you’re considering adopting Twitter as a part of your communications strategy, by all means do (or better yet, call on us to help), but go out of your way to be yourself, be personable and avoid the robotic auto DM at all costs. (And don’t forget to follow me...and TSG)

by Garret Ohm