If you are on Twitter you probably already know what FollowFriday is. If not Here is a 140 character explanation: Every Friday, on Twitter, you tweet the twitter id’s of other Twitter users you think people should follow, for whatever reason you choose.
The problem with FollowFriday quickly became that every one was tweeting twitter id’s and there was no context around them. FollowFriday quickly it lost it’s meaning and seems for the most part to have died off. (FYI, following a bunch of random people for no reason isn’t a good Twitter strategy).
But today, I got a very nice shout out from @gnuboss and a re-mention (no, not technically a re-tweet) of that shout-out from @AdsMitchell. Here was the key and why I was really flattered, in each case they suggested one person. They didn’t jam in as many Twitter id’s as possible, they mentioned one. In addition, they explained why they though you should follow me.
This gave me an idea (a dangerous past-time I know).
If FollowFriday is going to be useful again, and I really do like the concept, then we should all follow suit. You might follow a lot of great people but choose carefully who you endorse. If you could only recommend one person that day, who would it be? In fact, since it’s FollowFriday, you are really endorsing one person for the week. Give that one person a shout out and add a brief explanation of why we should follow them. Don’t forget the FollowFriday hashtag #ff, and remember, you can always #ff someone else next week.
What makes this so much more powerful is that if you only shout-out to one person that day, and explain why we should all follow them, it means you are giving your valuable, personal endorsement to someone, NOT just blasting out a list of people you know or happen to like. The result is more likely to have the desired effect of getting people to follow that person. (Aren’t you nice). The more people you #ff the less valuable it becomes that day so really think about doing just one.
If I were going to create a recipe for FollowFriday it would look like this:
- The ID of one Twitter user I’m going recommend
- A short reason why I think YOU should follow them
- A short-link to their site (if appropriate)
- The FollowFriday hashtag #ff
Whether you have 100 followers or 1Million, your personal endorsement counts, and it says something about YOU. So put the value back in FollowFriday and make a meaningful recommendation for someone.
Who will you #ff today?
Don’t forget:
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