Nothing anybody tells you to do on Twitter is an absolute. Nothing. How you use it is truly up to you. That is, of course, unless you're an avid spammer, in which case you'll be dropped off Twitter. Other then that, it's your party.
But if there's one thing I'm feeling more & more strong about, it's advocating that you stop doing #FollowFriday tweets. And #EcoMonday while you're at it too. Well, not stop, but stop using it mindlessly.
Let me back up.
For those of you unfamiliar, #FollowFriday and #EcoMonday are two examples of hashtags, words marked with a # sign to help easily gather and make searchable tweets on a certain subject. In this case, it's people that you recommend others follow, the former being anybody you know, the latter being green/enviro/sustainability oriented people.
Why would I recommend against such a friendly, helpful sounding practice?
Because in most cases, it's lost any significance and lasting value. Most people simply list a huge number of people, with a #followfriday or #ff at the end. Or even worse, they retweet what someone else has tweeted. Why bother? It shows little thought and that you're doing this as a chore, not for any real benefit for those you mention.
For some this may be just being efficient, but to me it's a sign they've not taken any time to really consider who you're recommending, or how to effectively do it.
While it can have some value in the short term - those you mention following back, returning the recommendation, other people possibly choosing to follow your reccomendations - the mass of #followfriday and #ecomonday tweets don't result in an appreciable increase in followers.
I'm not saying don't do this, but do it smarter, resulting in more benefit for those you recommend, and for yourself, showing you care more then to just drop a big scoop of names in people's timelines.
How can you do it smarter?
I tweet with just 3-4 people, each with a brief, informative, or funny blurb by their name. This does two things: Gives context and reduces overload on the part of the recipient, increasing the likelihood they'll actually follow up on your recommendation, resulting in a meaningful connection.
Want to do something even smarter?
If you aren't already, follow @MrTweet and wait for them to follow you back, giving you your unique account url. I can already hear some of your Twitter veterans, retorts at the ready, shooting down this service, which up until recently I would have agreed was in many ways a waste of time.
But now, it's improved in a few appreciable ways:
It allows you to recommend people you think others should follow, giving you the choice of ones it thinks you'd want to recommend, or allowing you to specify who you'd like to recommend. It does still seem to skew to the already popular for who it suggests, a problem I continue to have with it, as I'm more of the mind of recommending the lesser known and those that people might appreciate discovering.
If you don't agree with who Mr. Tweet is suggesting you recommend , you can either remove that account from your list, or at the bottom, you can rate how useful Mr. Tweet is to your needs, along with whatever specifics you'd like to share. Triple covering things, there is a Uservoice feedback tab on the side of the page, allowing you to suggest/vote for feature requests. A sign of a service that actually cares what you have to share.
Mr. Tweet makes it simple and quick to recommend others, with "I recommend Exampleperson because:" already set to go, plus the prompt "he/she is great in..." You just quickly jot down why you think people should follow them, it shows you what resulting message it will broadcast, and off you go, it's been tweeted (if you choose)
Now how is this different than doing a #FollowFriday or #EcoMonday tweet?
A crucial difference is this: Much like StumbleUpon, the more someone is recommended by others, the more Mr. Tweet will recommend them to others using Mr. Tweet. In fact, they say, "People with recommendations are 32x more likely to be suggested." On my account, it says I was suggested to 1936 people in 26 days!
Mr. Tweet's recommendations also give context from within your existing network, telling you who's retweeted them, who follows them now, and giving you the option to see more of each, plus what they've recently tweeted. Taken together, this is a powerful tool to quickly assess if you think following this person is a wise use of your time. Not something a grocery list of people's names followed by #followfriday can do.
So please, as I said at the beginning of this article, do as you see fit, use the resources and advise that work for you. But if you'd like to build your network and reputation capital, I'd highly encourage these practices.
Readers: What practices have worked for you in using Twitter that we could all learn from? What questions do you have that I might answer (or tweet to find out!) What other areas of social media are you using, considering, have questions about?
