Follow Friday: 8 Best Practices

Friday Follow: Best Practices

What is Friday Follow?

Every Friday, people on Twitter recommend their friends to their other friends, using the #Friday Follow or #FF hashtag. If you have someone you like, you can tell your other friends about that person, and connect good friends. This practice has been going on for years. However, some #FFs have become more spammy recently, as described in this fabu-tastic article from The Onion.

Some Avoid Friday Follow

Your #FFs Are Boring!

Many people now pull the covers over their heads and go back to sleep just to avoid Friday mornings. Why? Millions of tweets go out with that all-too-familiar #FF hashtag and the much-maligned list of @ThisPerson @ThatPerson that fills tweet after tweet. To make matters worse, people retweet those #FFs! If you’d like to optimize your time on #FollowFriday, here are some ideas for you.

Don’t Tweet Big Lists of #FFs

People like to have a reason to follow other people. So if you stuff as many of your followers into a tweet as possible, that can be very off putting. And people may decide to unfollow you, if they categorize you as a spammer.

Don’t Retweet #FFs

If you happen to be recommended, do not retweet the entire list and add to the spam. Just thank the person who recommended you (and delete everyone else on the list, please!).

Choose Your Top Engagers

Give People a Reason to Follow!

There may be only a few people who really engage with you every week. Pick four or five of them. Now tell us why you follow them. Be as specific as possible. I like recommending one person per tweet. Then, next Friday, pick different people to recommend.

Follow Other People’s Suggestions

If someone recommends you in a list of people to follow, check out some of their friends. Following friends of friends is a good way to extend your reach on Twitter. Notice who has good recommendations and whose recommendations are, well, bogus.

Tell People When You Follow

I like to thank the person who is the connection, like so: “Thank you, @PersonA, for the #FF! Also followed your friend @PersonB.” This often results in @PersonB thanking and following back. And @PersonA will notice that you read their tweet, too.

Recommend On Other Days

Why not do a #FollowMonday or #FollowRightNow hashtag? It’s unexpected, won’t add to the spam, and is much more likely to be well-received by your followers. You could slip one of these in between your other tweets (maybe do one per day), instead of #FollowFriday.

Go the Extra Mile

Go the Extra Mile

If you want extra bonus points and gold stars, you could tell everyone to follow, “like” on Facebook, and also follow on Pinterest, along with shortened URLs. This gives the person getting the recommendation a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Create a Friday Follow List

Put the people you really like onto a list, and then recommend that people check out or subscribe to the list. This requires a little more work from you, but will pay off in the long run.

What Are Your Friday Follow Recommendations?

Did I forget anything? Please leave a comment! Thanks!