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TweetLater, Alligator!
Twitter is a great platform to help you build relationships and brand yourself. However, what do you do when you want to send out a Tweet, but you don’t happen to be home or somewhere else that Tweeting is available?
Enter TweetLater, the Twitter automation application. The two primary essential features of TweetLater are the functions that allow you to post date your Tweets and automatically follow other Twit’s. The only drawback to these features is the tendency of users to ’spam’ their followers, which is what you DON’T want to do.
Remember that the primary purpose of Twitter is that it’s a social network and you want to use it to build relationships. So with TweetDeck, you can choose to ‘auto follow’ all Twit’s who follow you and set up a welcome message for all of your new follower’s. When creating that welcome message it’s imperative that you ditch the links in your message. There is no worse message to send than to welcome your new follower’s with a sales pitch or a promotional gimmick. That isn’t building a very solid relationship at all.
So what DO you put in your auto response? Try thank you! Ditch the marketing persona for a moment, and just be a person. Twitter is a social network, so show your social side and thank the Twit for following you and connecting with you, and let them know you look forward to getting to know them a little better in the future. Show them that there is a real person on the other side of the Tweet, and not just an auto generated response.
But How Do You Set Up Your Auto Response For New Follower’s?
Pretty simple really. First of all you need to set up your TweetLater account at www.tweetlater.com. Once inside your new account you will go to the tab that says +Twitter which means add a new account. It is fairly self explanatory from there.
1. Check the box that says Auto Welcome to automatically welcome new follower’s.
2. Below that is it says Send This Message, which is where you will input your welcome message. Remember, no selling!
3. Below that, you have the choice to automatically follow your new follower’s. This is preference, but it’s always nice to reciprocate. Check the box if you want to automatically follow.
4. You can check the box below to manually approve all reciprocal following first, which might be something you want to consider to avoid following spammers.
5. Below that is an box to check to automatically unfollow those who unfollow you. I would say check this feature simply because you want to be careful of your follower to followee ratio. You don’t want to be following more people really than you have following you.
6. Below that is a final option to have a email ‘digest’ of replies sent to your inbox. That is entirely a personal choice and up to you. Finally, just click save and you should be all set!
As to the post dated Tweet feature, be very careful with them and use them wisely. As I mentioned before, there are some who are getting fed up with TweetLater simply because too many users are forgetting the relationship building aspect of social networking and using it indiscriminately to promote their stuff 24/7.
So, be very careful with phrasing, and don’t inundate your users with sales pitches and generic quotes. Mix it up by adding in a good morning, hope your having a great day, or if it’s near a holiday wish them a happy holiday. You can also send out a link to someone else’s blog with an interesting topic, or something else cool or funny, maybe a YouTube video with a good message.
The point is to remember that while TweetLater can be a very powerful application when used properly, it is essential that you remember the two paramount goals in learning to social network successfully. The first is building relationships and the second is building credibility and trust. If you do both of these things, and focus on quality rather than numbers, you will find you have a very responsive network of Tweep’s that will help you catapult your name and business into something phenomenal.
Ron Davies
