April 9, 2010 198 Comments

Turn Twitter’s Follow Friday in Blog Traffic

Talk about an “inside baseball” blog post, we’re going to talk about “follow Friday,” a project that Micah Baldwin started a year or so ago to get new people introduced into social circles on Twitter. Follow Friday has become a bit of a mess to look at on Twitter, because every Friday, many people start posting 140 characters worth of names of people they feel you might benefit from knowing.

My idea: turn Follow Friday into a single tweet with a link to a blog post of the people you think others should follow.

It solves two problems: It gives you more than 140 to talk about the people you recommend, and it also cleans up Twitter so that we don’t watch a stream of @someoneawesome names rushing by all day.

You with me?

Here are some people from my list (and just a few to get the game going):

@Ed – Ed Shahzade is part of the glue of Twitter. He’s a connector and a do-er. He helps people all the time.

@MayhemStudios – Calvin Lee is a great source of information. He scours twitter quite often to find the good stuff and share it out. I learn something from him all the time.

@donmilleris – Don Miller is one of my current author crushes, and he wrote A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, one of my top 2 books for 2010.

@badbanana – Tim Siedell is just plain funny. I love his sense of humor, and he’s totally worth it.

@lmarconi – Lucia Marconi had the guts to tell me she thought I was being a bit egotistical lately, and that she liked my ideas, but sometimes felt put off by my ego. She then wrote a great blog post telling me more ideas. And we had a great back and forth on Twitter. I’m grateful. I can get but-kissing all day long, but she had a constructive, real, solid, non-jealous criticism, and I needed to hear it. Thanks, Lucia.

–

There you go. That’s a list. It’s just a starter. Make your own. Find the good people. Find people who need the attention. Find people who matter to you. Share the locals. Use public Twitter lists (if the lists are not judgment-based, such as “smart people”).

Promote others. It really does help the system.

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  • http://twitter.com/banksy6 Alastair Banks

    Really good idea Chris – I try and put more into an #FF than just a name – I think the value is in explaining a bit more about why others should follow that person….

  • http://www.justchickflicks.com/ Clarabela

    I tried this technique on Twitter instead of the usual #followfriday list. It worked very well. Almost every person replied with a special 'Thank you'.

  • http://bladeronner.com bladeronner

    Very good idea Chris. @trstudios actually makes a video of his follow Friday recommendations.

  • http://twitter.com/rebeccawoodhead Rebecca Woodhead

    Have been on a mission to tidy up Follow Friday since I started BETA testing twitter lists. One of the first lists I set up was http://twitter.com/rebeccawoodhead/FF and I haven't gone back to the 'traditional' way of doing it since. When you tweet your link on Twitter, obviously, it's just @name/ff so it's easy to tweet the list and give reasons in 140 characters. Chris Voss is on a mission to change it too. It has become very spammy.

    Recently, I've taken it a step further and do it like this http://bit.ly/RWLists which makes it easier for people to follow my followers and helps them out more.

    Blog's looking good BTW.

  • http://johnrwoodman.com/ John Woodman

    I can totally agree with you on the streams of names and confess I too was guilty of this in the beginning. About a month or two ago I started personalizing each tweet for follow Friday with only one name per tweet but would encourage others as to why they might want to follow them. I never thought of the genius of adding their blog as well. Thanks for sharing such a great idea.

    John

  • http://twitter.com/MarDeck Martha Hazard Decker

    I really like this idea and wonder why no one else thought of this before. Of course, this is why you are Chris Brogan! I think I will do the same on my blog and Twitter next week.

  • http://twitter.com/hyperlocavore Liz McLellan

    Love it Chris!

  • http://stopdoingnothing.com Patrick Allmond

    I call this – followforareason. Much better than follow because it is the end of the week.

  • http://www.thelettertwo.com Ken Yeung

    Hi Chris – great idea…I like how these #followfriday blog posts are taken off. I actually started doing this a year ago on my blog with way more details about who I follow and recommend…and do it on a thematic basis. You can see the various blog posts here: http://blog.thelettertwo.com/category/followfri…

  • http://www.r4-ds.es/ m3 ds real

    Superb idea!It sounds cool to have a million followers but there are people signing up every second and for that every person,I will get notification email and if i turned it off then its possible that i can miss my friends in that.Have any idea to avoid that?

  • http://twitter.com/SKSDesigns Shannon Steffen

    Great idea! I like the logic behind it!

  • http://twitter.com/MimiMeredith Mimi Meredith

    Gini Dietrich has been doing this for some time. It's nice to see the idea catch on.

  • sandi4heinrich

    Thank you. Your work continues to connect, inspire, educate, involve and ready me.

  • http://www.melaniekissell.com melaniekissell

    Tim Siedell is my kind of human being! A sense of humor goes a LONG way in every one of our relationships.

    Great tip for creating a blog post with your Follow Friday reco's instead of the usual ho-hum technique.

  • richhazlett

    Thanks for sharing a great way to add some relevancy to the process, Chris.

  • http://twitter.com/allenmireles Allen Mireles

    @MarionChapsal's #FollowFriday approach a while back was unique and lovely. She created a mind map of the people she recommended and then tweeted the link to that. I thought it wonderful.

  • http://toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush tojosan

    Love this #followfriday idea!
    Remembering to do it is another thing altogether.
    Thanks for the reminder about a great idea.
    Cheers,
    Todd

    PS it's okay to have an ego; yours only comes off big sometimes due to folks placing their expectations upon you.

  • http://www.granthammond.com/ Grant Hammond

    Of course there is a moral obligation, if you get FF, you almost have to return the favor out of pure etiquette.

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

    Hi Grant,
    I don’t feel any obligation to follow people because they follow me. I look at what they’re sharing and, if it’s interesting, I'll connect.

    Why follow someone if you have nothing in common?

    Just to be PC? Seems pointless to me :)

  • http://www.granthammond.com/ Grant Hammond

    I usually feel that way too, but if the person who FFs me is in the same industry as I am, I do feel an obligation so as to prevent any hurt feelings or potential black balling (or gray balling).

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

    Sure, that makes sense. I get FF from people in Russian (I think?), japanese and other languages. I just don’t get it.

    I use lists to track those I'm closest too. The only way I can control things, tbh.

  • http://www.memorybits.co.uk memory card reader

    Follow Friday has become a bit of a mess to look at on Twitter, because every Friday, many people start posting 140 characters worth of names of people they feel you might benefit from knowing. If social media is still about giving, this is one good way to do it. If it's real and sincere.

  • http://favit.com/panciuc Radu Panciuc

    That's a great idea, Chris. This way #FF makes more sense since you can easily argument your suggestions. Personally I don't care much about a tweet with several twitter users in it but seeing why I should follow those people might raise my interest and click follow.

  • sarahgriffiths

    Great idea

  • http://blog.train.xc0n.com christopher franko

    im actually doing this here.
    blog.train.xc0n.com

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  • http://www.officehounds.co.uk Maggie Langley

    I love this idea! Great for people who are having blogger's block, too!

  • http://www.sexycopy.org k0zm0zs0ul

    So if I tell you you've got a big ego and scurry around for a nice sharp pin to pop the looming Chris Brogan head, you'll love me forever? ;D

    Really, totally agree on the #FF thing. I rarely participate anymore other than sending thank you's (which are starting to get a bit redundant) and when I do it's to recommend a person specifically with a comment as to why.

    But the blog post idea is very solid, and one I've been meaning to do. lol Thanks for the reminder!

    Warm regards,
    Cori

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  • barneyausten

    Hi Chris. Just did our first attempt at this – will be interested to see the response now! BTW – thanks for the pointer on @badbanana – he's hilarious!

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  • http://www.kpo.com KPO Philippines

    Tweets double, or even triple, every Fridays as it is a “Follow Friday,” a term which only Twitter users are familiar with. If you get people to “FF” you, then it will be a big boost to your marketing efforts as you will become visible to thousands and possibly millions of people.

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  • http://www.intheboxproduction.com/ Heath Close

    Brilliant.

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