DO’S

Do be generic; Assume the recipient could be a total stranger as well as a friend. It could be an introvert or an extrovert, it could be a competitor, a potential client or someone in a completely different field.

Do delay your response; Our software gives you the ability to delay your response by 1 hour, 2 hours or 4 hours.  Depending on how active your social media strategy is, 1 hour could be enough.

Do give out a link; “here is my Facebook page if you would like to connect that way also” is great and not pushy. Give out the link to your website and/or YouTune Channel. (NOT YouTube specific video)

Do state your purpose; When I subscribe to your micro-blog, what am I subscribing to?  what am I going to read about?

Invite contribution; “I love to hear feedback on the XYZ subject information that I share and I invite you to go down my feed and share your opinion”  or  “we chat about XYZ subject every Friday noon at #XYZ , join the next one.”

Reward your followers; “Welcome to our twitter community!  Coffee is on us from now until Christmas for all our Twitter followers.” Be gentle with that one, don’t be pushy.

DON’TS

Don’t self promote; Avoid the “I would like to share with you this unique opportunity” type of message.  Avoid telling about what you do for living or redirecting to a product of service page.

Don’t self promote; Avoid “check out this video!” kind of message.  This is spam!  Its one thing to say “I respond to weekly questions on video at youtube/mychanel but its a whole different thing to send out to a self promoting video.

Don’t self promote; Avoid stating a product benefit which is an obvious pitch such as “I help my clients save an average of 20% on their communication cost using social media”

CORPORATE ACCOUNTS

Optionally you can make it really clear that this is an auto-responder and declare it as such.  Do not delay the message but rather make the response instant. Be very formal when crafting your message.  Still follow the above dos and don’ts.