If you’re unfamiliar with #FollowFriday, it’s a weekly Twitter event allowing tweeps to recommend the great people they follow to their own followers. Superb idea, right? Right.
Here’s the thing, if you recommend someone, tell me why I should follow them. I’m not going to blindly sign up for anyone’s tweets just because you tell me to do so. Who are the people you’re recommending and why?
If you’re recommending five or seven people at once, I’m sorry, but you’re spamming me and your tweet has no value to me at all. I’m certainly not going to click on each user and figure out who they are and what they do.
Tell me that someone is great SEO resource, tweets great recipies or has an insightful blog on crisis communications. #followfriday is about vouching for someone, can I trust you if you’re vouching for ten different people every week? There are lots of great people on Twitter, but are there that many?
Mark – Great post! This is why I try to specify or give name to the #followfriday I do like: architecture pack, or recently because I went to South by Southwest I did a #sxsw pack.
Only so much you can do and when you garner a following like you have you’ll want to help broaden the horizons of your group and give them ideas of who’s cool in your world!
Another things is that #followfriday tweets are only as valuable as the relationship you have with the tweetee. Because of the relationship you and I have I would hope you know that I would never put trash in my stream.
It’s just not my style.
Thanks for reading.
Vik Duggal
Mark, I agree with you that it would be much more productive to write *why* someone is worth following. But where’s the fun in playing by the rules?? Certainly every tweet can’t live up to everyone’s expectations. It takes a while to find the twitter folks who you connect with and I think it’s nice that people are giving a shout out those they have found.
Vik and APR, you guys and gals make good, valid points. Even just saying something like “#followfriday: social media peeps” then listing names is great. Just give me some direction. I follow several different groups (green, SM, PR, advertising, auto) on Twitter, so I wouldn’t expect my followers to know if my recommendations were appropriate for them unless it was noted. I know Vik would never recommend me trash, but context helps me determine if these people are worth pursuing for my personal stream.