The robots come out at night

Twitter at night is fun! You can totally see who the bots are!

It’s 1am, and you’re on Twitter, reading the hashtag conversation #unfollowmeif. The people you follow in your city are posting things like “Woo hoo! #IdreamofJeanie marathon!” and “Oh, great. The DH is barfing again. Do not want to catch this. How can I sneak out to a hotel?”

Then there’s this guy — Scott Stratten would call him That Guy — who also lives in your city, and who posts the following:

RT @industryanalyst Twenty ways to leverage your brandactional granularities

Long, but essential: Video w/ Mr. Serious Economist about tax impact on widget industry supply factories. http://so.bored/moo$#*!

“Thanks to social media, the customer decision journey has undergone a paradigm shift” — Monty Motivator #quote #brilliant

RT @MontyMotivator My first tweeter post! My book about excellence is excellent. Learn to excel at excellence in an excellent manner at http….

What do you think of this? “What’s the ROI of social media?” A collection of metrics on twenty graphs: http://www.ihaventlearnedaboutshortlinks.com/roi-of-social-media

What does WHO think of this??? It’s one in the freaking morning! What the hell, dude?!

Tip: Dude is not there. Dude is… a bot.

Don’t believe me? Reply to him. See if you get a response.

You won’t, because the guy whose photo you see has decided that he needs to push his material out at all hours, so he’s turned this chore over to a robotic software service.

This is not the same strategy as scheduling a tweet that says, “For my Australian friends: My latest blog post. http://imasleepbutpleasereadmy.blog” This is…. well, it’s not a strategy at all. It serves absolutely no purpose. It’s not networking. It’s not advertising. It’s not… anything.

Thanks to Craig A. White for inspiring this post by asking how to tell who the bots are. For the record, Craig was on Twitter for real.

Please post your questions and comments about this subject!

Angelique is your social media image consultant! I can help you look and sound better on line by improving your web content, blog content, graphics and social networking skills. Contact me at info@afmarcom.com or 602.735.3107.

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