Has anyone ever received a spam email and enjoyed it?  I am sure most of you will stop me here and say, “Well our Auto DMs are not random emails, we are only sending 1 message right after the person follows us.”  That’s true, technically he did follow you so its not a random email trying to sell him penis pills.  Let me try again!

Has anyone ever got a random call from a company you use (phone service) where they are trying to sell you an upgrade, and you enjoyed the call?  Yea, I know technically it’s not spam because you have a service with them so they can call you and try to sell you things, but it still sure does feel like spam to me!   And it is definitely annoying.

Do not spam your followers.  I get it, you are happy you got a follow on Twitter and you want to advertise everything you do immediately.  However, no one feels flattered that a bot just Auto DMed them rather than a real person.  Turn you email notifications on and when someone follows you, message them yourself.  Oh, wait, an email notification would probably be a bit of an overkill because it will clutter your email box huh?  Well, guess what you Auto DM does to the person’s DM box?  It’s not personal, even if your Auto DM automatically adds the person’s name.  There isn’t anything in that Auto DM that they couldn’t have found in your profile prior to following you.  Website, name, etc. Small streamers, instead of annoying potential new followers with automatic responses, message them yourself.  If that’s too hard to do then maybe you aren’t that small of a streamer.

We polled users of Reddit.com/r/twitch and asked them how they feel about Auto DMs. Over 60% of them said they would immediately unfollow the person.  20% said they would be annoyed but wouldn’t unfollow.  10% said it’s smart and they expect it.  10% didn’t really care one way or another.

Stream small, think big!