Follow Friday: More than just Shameless Promotion!

Are you growing the quality of your network with Follow Friday?

What is the point of Follow Friday? People ask this all the time. It so often seems like it’s just gratuitous plugging of people’s friends.  Well, you are not wrong; however, you are not right either.

What is Follow Friday?

Follow Friday is a hashtag event that happens every Friday.

People tag their posts with #FF and then list names of tweeps they want to give a shout out to.

Why should I bother?

What Follow Friday promotes is engagement.  People offer the coveted #FF to a list of people they engaged with that week.  It is tells everyone who reads your tweets, “these are people I talk to, and people who talk to me”.  These are individuals with whom I have real relationships – they are concerned with conversation rather than just promoting their message.

So when some gives you a #FF they are telling all of their followers that you are a quality tweep.

The FF Strategy

#FF is as simple as listing names.  However the way you group people matters.  You do not talk to them without thinking about what you say, so do not #FF without thinking about it first.  Put similar people in like groups.

  1. When you group people in a niche you can categorize your #FF by saying “My social media #FF” or “My adult super star #FF”. This allows for easier and more effective networking.
  2. People can be peculiar about who they are grouped with. I had a social media tweep comment about being grouped with a bunch of porn stars. Afterward I realized they did not necessarily want that association. They know that I am in social media for adult entertainment, but they weren’t.  So you might not want to have your business development tweeps in with your Titty Tuesday tweeps.  Its like a seating chart at a wedding. Just because they like you does not mean they like each other.

FF Tools

  • Follow Friday Helper is a good tool. It makes it easy to see who you have been engaging with and helps you put them all in one tweet.
  • Top Follow Friday will let you see who is endorsing whom.
  • The Twitter Tag Project will look at your last 200 tweets and identify who you have engaged with and will create your #FF post.

It is Monday. You have all week to collect your Follow Friday tweeps.

Will you #FF?