9 December 2008 No Comment

It’s funny the way things turn out. Shortly after I hit the publish button on my last post about TweetLater I received this tweet…

Thank you Maria for the heads up on that post!

The post that tweet is referring to is called "Twitter Automation, A Terrible Trend " Of course, I had to take a look at what this post had to say and do agree with what Paul has to say. I agree with his consensus that automation is not a good thing.

But… as I stated in my last post I do feel that some automation is ok. As long as you don’t sound spammy, get lazy, and rely on it too much.

There is always, and I can not over emphasize this fact, for personal contact and follow up. For example, if you have an automated direct message saying that you for the follow then you shouldn’t just rely on that to do your job for you. It’s a matter of courtesy to send that person an @reply or another dm with personally thanking them.

The first one is instant so no matter if you’re connected or away that person knows you are taking them seriously. But, that will only last for a little while if they don’t hear from you personally.

Is automation a terrible trend. More than likely.

And it’s for the same reasons that I explained in the TweetLater post . People get lazy and use it for spamming purposes.

TweetLater is like Ping.fm in a way. Ping.fm lets you automate updates to all your social media networking sites with just one update. For some things that’s ok, but for a personal presence you will need to physically visit the place and interact with the people.

Automation is bad no matter where you use it, if…. that’s all you do. But, I believe that a little bit of automation mixed in with a large dose of personal contact is actually helping your productivity.

So, I do agree with Paul is saying , I just don’t think it’s as bad as it sounds.

What do you think?

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