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Only 2 Things to Do with Twitter DMs


I was reading this Twitter follower tidbit over at Idea Sandbox yesterday:
Five secrets to make even stronger, meaningful connections with yourTwitter followers. For each and every person who has chosen to follow you on Twitter:
  1. Read their profile.
  2. Follow and explore the link they provided in their bio.
  3. Send a personal direct message to each and every one who chooses to follow you.
  4. If they are listed as a company (instead of a person) visit their site and find out their name. Use their name in your thank you note.
If they don’t allow direct messages on Twitter, visit their website and use an email provided or say “thank you” in their website’s contact form.

Guess where I generally stop? If you said #2, BINGO!
Sorry, but I am generally opposed to DMs for the most part because they are usually horrifically spammish and impersonal and while I do agree that a personal touch would be nice. I would spend all day addressing the flotsam and jetsam of followers that tend to come and go only hoping that I auto-follow.
Yes, I will read a post or a page to learn more about someone who follows me. This helps me determine if it is worth my time to follow them. If I like something they say on Twitteror blog, I will RT or comment in the appropriate place. A DM at that point is semi-worthless to both me and them. At least with a RT or mention, they get the further information or don't punt me on follow because they have a strict no-follow on DM rule.
This is also just impractical- if you are aiming for audience, you don't have time to say thank you to everyone. The follow was sufficient- either I'm worth the follow because my feed was worth it, or it wasn't. List me and see what I say if you don't want my mess in your regular feed.
I agreed with the ending of the post:
We should respect the relationship we can build with our followers. They are customers of our content. We are responsible to maintain the quality of our tweets, so that with each new tweet, they are happy – all over again – they chose to follow us.
This is true, but they can also unfollow in a heartbeat and then you just wasted all that effort on what?
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