Tool Tuesday: SocialOomph
There are some actions in Twitter that you might choose to automate, such as Welcome Direct Messages and Auto Follow. All of these are things you can set on autopilot with the help of a 3rd party, but you can not do it directly from Twitter. For those services, I use and suggest SocialOomph.
Welcome Direct Messages are both a useful tool and the bane of the Twitter existence. A DM is essentially a private message within Twitter; the person whom your sending the DM to has to be a follower. If you choose to send an automatic welcome DM, be sure it has value for your potential follower, but don’t expect much from it. Heavy users of Twitter are to the point where they almost ignore their DM’s because there is so much junk (spam). So why do it at all? This is a discussion in social media circles today, and everyone has their opinion. My personal opinion on the matter (subject to change) is that there is no reason NOT to send one, although heavy Twitter users are slightly annoyed by them, they still expect them. Further, if you are adding value in your DM, then it isn’t annoying at all.
The ability to AutoFollow is perhaps my favorite feature of Social Oomph. I’m pretty much on #teamfollow, which means if you follow me, I follow you. Businesses often ask me if this is a good tactic for them. I think, at least initially, its a good way to keep fresh conversations going; particularly if you are a business new to the social sphere, you should consider each new follow an opportunity to create engagement. Granted, you’ll end up following some people (or bots) that you may eventually want to unfollow, but in the Twittersphere, I think its better to err on the side of creating a new friend as opposed to alienating them. Further, this is why curating lists is so important. Savvy curation of lists allows you to see the people you most want to see and talk to regularly. While I could be convinced that Auto DM’s are not appropriate – I doubt I’ll ever recommend that for Auto Follow.
SocialOomph offers some additional services besides those mentioned. Some are free, some are part of their paid service. I tried their paid service and I just felt that that overall, the services were clunky and in some cases, redundant to tools I like better. For example, from SocialOomph, you can also schedule Tweets, even bulk upload them. But I use Hootsuite (affiliate link) for that; I’m in Hootsuite all the time, why would I leave to go schedule tweets at yet another site?
None the less, I do recommend SocialOomph for the services mentioned. If you are looking for a way to automate some features of Twitter, this is a good option.
