I almost always automatically unfollow anyone who auto-dm’s me with a link & a sales pitch. That’s just not cool.

I’m less likely to unfollow if it’s just a simple “Thank You” message. Truthfully, if that’s all it is, then I probably will take another look at their site. If their site doesn’t prove interesting or appealing right away though, they’ll get the boot pretty quickly.

On the other hand, I and most legitimate followers would have seen your website as long as it was in your profile before I followed you. Thus, a direct message to promote the blog should not be necessary and I question how much more traffic it drives.

On twitter as of late, I follow a lot of people that have similar interests, in hopes they turn out to be interesting people. In doing so I’ll almost bet you that out of 100 automated direct messages I get, 90+ of them I end up unfollowing because they turn out to be spammers.

I appreciate the time you took to write your comments and state your side of the issue and I will definitely not be unfollowing you because of the DM.

I would like to be very clear that I don’t like the spammer followers, and I don’t even bother to follow them so getting an instant DM from them isn’t issue for me. But, I am a one-woman show, and without the ability to automatically DM new followers to acknowledge them, I stand a good chance of never having a chance to interact with them directly.

Maybe you would not realize that my welcome DM to new followers is automated because it is simple: “Thanks for following. I look forward to seeing you in the Twittersphere!” But if I understand your post right, if you did realize it was automated, you would unfollow me. Is that right?

I have no ulterior motive. Yes, I would like to drive traffic to my website, (wouldn’t you?), but I don’t plan to pound my message into you with a DM and a gazillion tweets an hour. I will post a few tweets with a link and a quick description of the services I offer. If people are interested, they will take a closer look. If they are not interested, they’ll move on to the next tweet.

So please, don’t paint all of us with the same brush. I consider my efforts to be tasteful and polite. The automation allows me to use Twitter as the tool it is supposed to be to spread the word about my business, my personal interests and my favorite charities so like-minded people can find me and share their thoughts and ideas, just like I am doing for you.

By the way, I found you after you followed me, and I returned the favor by following back. You’ll get an automated DM from me soon, if you haven’t already. I hope you choose to continue in my network so we can learn from each other about how twitter works for all of us.