Business Insight Zone

Just to tie two concepts together . . .

You’ve heard me rail against dumb questions. (I.e. questions you could and should have easily answered for yourself before you ever asked them.)

You’ve heard me rail against automatic direct messages (DMs) on Twitter. (People use these to spam welcome new followers on Twitter, but they seldom add any value.)

Now let me just make the connection:

• If you ask a dumb question once — hey, who doesn’t?
• If you ask dumb questions over and over, people will come to think that it’s you, and not just your off-the-cuff question, that’s dumb.
• If you want to set up a Twitter auto-DM, you have the (risky) opportunity to make a good first impression over and over on everyone who receives it.
• BUT, if you ask a dumb question via auto-DM, you’re asking the same dumb question over and over of lots of different people. Which, not surprisingly, may cause them to think you’re dumb.

So, don’t do that. Stick with “Hi — thanks for following!” if you’re not sure.

(In case you’re wondering, yes, we’ve been getting a lot of these.)

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Related posts:

• There IS such a thing as a dumb question.
• What Works Better than an Auto-DM.
• What not to say in a Twitter auto-DM.
• The Basic Basics: Don’t do something avoidably stupid.

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Photo by cesar bojorquez.

Category: Social media, The language of business