twitter fail whale What you cant Automate on TwitterTwitter was a place where people used to converse and share their updates. Where they are going? What they are doing? What they like and what they dislike? It was a facebook type status in 140 charachters.

Then came the social media marketers who wanted to maximize their traffic with minimum efforts. This resulted in apps that could automate twitter status updates and also gain many followers in a few minutes time. You could update using twitterfeed and you could also schedule updates. (Using Scheduling tweets or not is a debatable concept).

New apps can automate a host of things but they still can’t automate some things which makes twitter such a nice and warm place to be a part of. Here are some I think are the most awesome things that you can’t automate on twitter:

Amazing Conversation

Twitter is all about conversation and if you don’t follow a regime to talk to your followers on twitter, you will not be known. Replying to your followers can result in some of the most amazing conversations. I have had many debates with my twitter followers on various different subjects.
Even if our opinions were different, we were still able to broaden our horizon by presenting our thoughts in front of each other.

If you are not replying, then you are not tweeting! If you feel that you don’t have enough time to engage, there are always techniques that will be able to cut down on your time to engage.

Learning

When I first started tweeting, I had little knowledge on many subjects like social media marketing, internet marketing, etc. I thought twitter was totally useless and it was a total time waste. But, when I started using it like a pro tweeter, I was able to grasp many topics in a small period of time. This knowledge helped me in improving my blogging and writing skills and it also gave me many ideas which I could blog about. Now, if you are automating, then you are not reading the tweets and hence, you are losing on an amazing learning opportunity.

Reputation

Reputation is not built in minutes. It takes months of hard work to build a high reputation twitter account where people love what you tweet. So, automation cannot build reputation as you are not spending enough time to build good relationships with people.

Also, a myth among many twitter users is that a high twitter following equals a higher reputation. This is not at all true. A person who got 20000 followers may have zero reputation because he got all the followers using automated methods. Whereas a person with 1000 followers can have a very high reputation if he had worked hard for it.

Influence

Becoming a twitter champ is not a piece of cake. You have to do a lot more than just following people. You have to make really good relationships with twitter users who have a high influence. Once you become a part of their influence circle, your influence will increase on its own.

A high influence can be achieved with the lower follower count if you are able to develop great relationships with other highly influential twitter champions.

Friends

This is the part that I cherish the most. On twitter, I have made really good friends who I am able to interact with freely and also I am able to share my thoughts with. Friends are needed for moral and emotional support. When you have hit rock bottom, these friends will be there for you. I wouldn’t have made any twitter friends if I hadn’t interacted with them in the first place.

So, if you are planning to automate twitter, then you are missing out on making some really amazing friends.

Business Opportunity

Twitter has many opportunities for the growth of your business. But, customers will believe in your product if you are genuine on twitter and you treat your followers in the right way.

Building a business starts with building trust and that too cannot be automated!

Can you think of any other things that cannot be automated on twitter?