Let me start by saying I have never been a big fan of the automatic follow back. That was until I started thinking about it from the perspective of a business.
Not following back instantly is bad customer service. If your site as a business then not following back anyone who follows you is bad customer service. My own Twitter account is a different matter. That’s my personal brand and my brain combined with my personality decides whom I follow back.
Not following back instantly is like making me wait for your RSS feed. Just plain silly when you think about it. Anyone who visits your site and clicks on the Twitter “Follow Me” link deserves an instant response. It’s the least you can do for them having had the respect to come visit.
Yes, a follow back in Twitter gives them access to you as well, I get that. I handle that in a very simple way, separating the signal from the noise on Twitter is my job. If you abuse the followback by direct messaging me in a way that makes it clear it’s not a one off message to me – you’re dropped.
Automatic follow back is a huge time saver. no longer do I need to check the account on a regular basis to see who to follow back. It just happens. When you are running one web-site with you name on it and one Twitter account that’s not big deal. It’s actually fun to see who is following you. When you are running multiple accounts for multiple sites it becomes virtually impossible.
Don’t confuse automatic follow back with account automation. In the case of @GoQip I and my partner in QIP.com both monitor the account. Responses to @ mentions and messages are from us, not a bot. Be careful not to lose your real, authentic and sustainable Twitter voice.
A quick reminder that QIP.com will be offering URL shortening services soon. As an example the affilate link for auto follow back dot com looks like this:
http://qip.com/afb
Compared to:
http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=220285&U=406767&M=26439
Much easier to add to a 140 character Twitter post! Make sure to shorten your URLs for Twitter and auto follow back your new followers.
