Its Friday again, great. We all love Friday, and Twitter users in particular, partly due to a great tradition which emerged, like many features, from its users.
Follow Friday is an important aspect of twitter interaction, and after a request by Andy Marshall (@fotofacade on twitter) I’m going to give you my take on it.
What is Follow Friday?
Follow Friday is a tradition on twitter which emerged as a way of recommending to the people who follow you, who they should follow.
People participate by tweeting the @handle(s) of the people they recommend together with the hashtag #followfriday. A Hashtag is a device for identifying and collating tweets, and if you click on the #followfriday hashtag you’ll see a list of everyone’s tweets using it.
Why is FollowFriday Important?
The reason why recommending people to follow is so important is:
- Your followers don’t know who you follow; they don’t see in their stream what you see in your stream. So Follow Friday is a way of passing on the best people you follow to them;
- When you include someone in a #followfriday tweet, you complement them in public, and they see your recommendation in their @mentions stream. Unlike giving to charity, this good thing is public (like virtually everything on twitter). So #followfriday gives twitter a great Friday feeling!
- Its really important to be participatory on Twitter. Some of the best things which come out of the platform are collaborative. So why not give it a go?
- People are always looking for good people to follow on twitter, so that their stream is full of relevant stuff. This leads me to my advice…
How to do a Good Follow Friday Tweet
Use the hashtag #followfriday (some use #ff but this is usually because they run out of space!)
Add the handles of the people you want to recommend. If you include a couple of handles then the receipients will see each others’ and you’ll introduce people to each other too.
Give a REASON. This is essential. There is no point recommending anyone to everyone if they can’t work out why. If you give a reason, you’ll be helping them decide whether to bother. Here’s a great #followfriday which proves the point:
#FollowFriday to @hotelalpha9 the country’s most popular twitter bobby and on the beat in our local area, Harrogate Folk, tech leader 🙂
— Bullying UK (@bullyinguk) February 19, 2010
So who do you recommend this Friday, and WHY?
Great post!
I have seen many people still asking the question…what is #ff? or what is follow friday? This post explains it all.
There is one aspect of follow friday which i use and that is ‘resources’. I also recommend following ‘streams’ such as ‘#measure’ for some great tips and people discussing how to measure marketing campaigns. There is also one for PR folks called #measurepr.
A great example is the recent #SMAEC stream which includes some great tips, construction industry stats, people and some great advice/discussions and blogposts.
Follow Friday should also be used to direct people to connect with other people as well as join other streams and have more discussions with like minded people with the same interests.
Thats an excellent idea for extending #followfriday Pritesh – recommending good Hashtags to follow.
The #SMAEC event was a great success. We’ve set up a Linkedin Group for Architecture/Engineering/Construction firms (especially in the UK) to talk more about the subject here:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2740731&trk=hb_side_g
Also you might have noticed all the links from my presentation are now on Delicious – check the right hand column of this blog for “My Social Media Bookmarks”. Or they are all here:
http://delicious.com/SuButcher/SMAEC
Enthusiastic hashtag users can also archive all the tweets which use it (great for an event as the tweets fade after a week or two otherwise). Here’s the #SMAEC archive:
http://twapperkeeper.com/SMAEC/
I love hashtags, they are so versatile!
Any more Followfriday suggestions?
Thanks for this Su.
It’s an important point to give a reason. People lose interest in Follow Fridays when they just see a list of names. I feel it’s much better to just do 2 or 3 tweets focusing on one or two individuals in each and giving a reason why. That gives much more value to your network.
.-= Andy Lopata´s last blog ..Connecting is not Enough – The Newsletter =-.
Great post – followfriday is probably one of the first ??? Moments for someone new to twitter and rather than put them off they should do as you say. Keeping it brief and adding a positive comment is absolutely spot on, works for me.
Hi Su,
I’d be interested to hear if I’m not the only one who doesn’t actually take much notice of people’s #FF these days?
I find that most of the time people are suggesting the same people week after week… very annoying. As others have said, a couple of suggestions with a reason are much more likely to get my attention than people who just reel off a list of handles.
Michael
I totally agree, just typing a list of names with #FF at the end (funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tweet with the full #FollowFriday!) is pointless.
I tend to do two #FFs maximum a week, they’re either a thank you to clients for keeping me busy during the week (which also gives my followers a chance to see the diverse range of transcription services I offer), or to someone who’s been of help, posted something particularly useful etc.
Sorry, I meant to add that yes, giving a reason to follow is incredibly important and more likely to have the desired effect!
How do i get cheerleaders to follow me on twitter?