#auto dms

Greet your new Instagram followers with a message.

Spammers are smart. We can all learn a thing or two from them. And we just did when we tried to find a solution to Twitter's DM link block. Brief background: Around a month back we started receiving emails that said the Auto DMs that are sent from JustUnfollow to new followers weren't being sent any longer. "Is there a problem at your end? Please check." And we checked. Turns out Twitter was to blame. They were blocking all DMs with links in them, except a few links that were spared (for instance, Facebook, Google, Twitter itself). What we did: We figured the best way to solve that would be to remove links from DMs or replace them with some that were popular enough to be allowed by Twitter, and wrote a blog post on those lines to help users who were facing problems: http://blog.justunfollow.com/heres-why-your-auto-dms-arent-being-sent/. The Spammers' Solution: Along came the spammers with their workarounds - and pretty smart workarounds they are too. While they use it for their nefarious means, you can use if for your marketing or whatever it is that you need to include a link in your message for. Here's what they do and you can too: 1. Tweet the link and add the link to that tweet in your message. In this case the link you include in your tweet will be a twitter.com link and will, therefore, get sent. Users will click on the link, be directed to the tweet and can then click on your link to be directed to the website you want them to. 2. Tweet the Google search result link. That is, search for your link in Google and use the link from the exact result as the link in your DM. For instance, if we search for JustUnfollow, we get justunfollow.com as the first result. We can use it's search link, which is this: https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.justunfollow.com%2F&ei=1biMUpSeF8qOrgeC2IGQDA&usg=AFQjCNFXRsboEugiy4VmWGs8nAp81DJEIQ&bvm=bv.56643336,d.bmk. Makes sense? 3. The final method is to use the link directly, but add a slash before the link, like this: /www.justunfollow.com. The link will no longer be hyperlinked, but it will at least go through to your followers. Cool and smart, right? Let us know if these work for you or if there are other workarounds you are using to get your Twitter direct messages to send without having to remove your links.  

[caption id="attachment_821" align="alignright" width="300"] Auto DM Twitter[/caption] A clarification before we get down to the gist of this post: JustUnfollow is a service and we make those features available which most users want, and as with all services, we realize that most of them can be, and are, misused. That does not mean we encourage their misuse. Clarification over. Lately, we've received several tweets from irate Twitter users who complain about spam JustUnfollow DMs clogging their inboxes. Most of our users know that we offer an Auto DM option, wherein they can set up to 10 different Direct Message texts and we send them out randomly whenever they get a new follower. Auto DMs can be cool: Sending a thank you DM when someone follows you is a nice touch. However, if you have a big account and get hundreds of followers per day (good for you!), it can't be humanly possible to send a manual DM to each of them. Auto DMs come to the rescue in this case. You can take the conversation forward with those who do respond back (assuming you've followed them back). Some Auto DM best practices: A lot of people send long flowery DMs that tell others how much they appreciate the follow and thank you and thank you and thank you. Truth be told, everybody receives the same/similar DM over and over. They are sick of it. Stop sending thank you auto DMs. Use it to give some benefit to those who receive them. Are you running a campaign wherein your new followers get a coupon code they can use when shopping from your store? That would be a great use of Auto DMs. How about a promise of a followback? Don't keep it just about you. Don't tell them to check out your blog or your new book. Instead, ask them to "connect" with you, for instance, on LinkedIn. You don't need to do Auto DM Finally, remember, you don't need to Auto DM to do Twitter. Nobody will unfollow you if you don't send a thank you message within seconds of them following you. What users on Twitter care about are what kind of value you bring to their timeline - are your tweets interesting, informative, funny. Is there any incentive for them to continue following you? If yes, then DMs or no DMs, you will succeed.   What are your thoughts on Auto DMs? Share them with us in the comments below. Found this post useful, think others will too? Share it using the social media buttons alongside.