I haven’t tweeted for over two weeks now. Even when I did tweet, I didn’t really feel satisfied with the way I gave out ‘follow friday’ shouts. Somehow, I never warmed up to then concept. Don’t get me wrong! I really care about my friends on twitter and I’d like to let my followers know about all those special people, who provide content, talk to me and above all are good friends. Lets take a look at why I think ‘#FollowFriday’ or #FF tweets if you will aren’t all that great and what can be done instead.
Too often in the history of mankind, a good practice has been established with the very good intentions and in alignment with the right principles, only to become institutionalized and practiced blindly, even when the practice no longer continues to serve its purpose or is no longer in alignment with the right principles. When I stopped to think about follow Friday tweets, I realized that history was repeating itself yet again.
Let us take a quick look at the reasons I think follow Friday tweets are a bad idea, before I make my case and present an alternative:
1. Everybody sends out #FF tweets en mass. These tweets look like, “#FF JohnT JaneW …”
2. If one start tweeting follow Friday suggestions, one must do it for everyone on the list of people they follow. Why? Because you do not wish to hurt anybody’s feelings. This becomes a nightmare when one follows back a number of people who follow you.
3. I have seen more personalized follow Friday tweets. They usually name only one person and give a reason to follow that person, by pointing out how nice or unique they are. However, one can hardly give out such follow friday tweets for all one hundred (or more) tweeps you like every friday.
4. I haven’t got any evidence for this, but I believe that follow Friday suggestions may be where bots and spammers harvest twitter accounts to to target. This is rather like the way spammers harvest email addresses from chain mail.
5. The method most people use is a combination of personalized and mass follow Friday tweeting. In my humble opinion, this undermines trust, because it communicates that those who are mentioned in the mass tweet aren’t really worth a special mention. While nobody might care, it still highlights a shortcoming of the current system.
6. I can’t help but take exception to the fact that there needs to be a special day to give a shout to the great tweeps out there.
Have you dipped into your twitter stream on a Friday? Everybody gives out those suggestions! You will notice almost immediately that these tweets fall into either the category of en mass or personalized. I have read a few (an admittedly small number) articles on good twitter behavior that encourage #FF tweeting. This seems to indicate that #FF tweeting is a tradition, a community established norm. Admittedly one has a choice not to do it, but society and social media in my rather limited experience do not work that way. Follow Friday suggestions were established as a way to share good content providers with your friends and the rest of the community. The intent was to show appreciation for the people who are dedicated to finding and sending content or just those who have been really good friends. Based on all that I have said above, can one really argue that it serves that purpose well? Ultimately, #FF tweeting can become a mechanical task, a time sink and a boring chore. What alternatives have we?
It turns out that there are quite a few alternatives -
1. Retweet often. You will be surprised at how much good content can lead to a follow. Besides, a retweet makes the person being retweeted special.
2. Give a shout out naming anybody you think is great on any day, whenever you like. Why wait for Friday?
3. Write about them on your blog. If you already have blog traffic, this is a great way to send followers to someone you appreciate.
4. Comment on their blogs and give them a good review. Never forget to retweet the link when someone you follow has posted great new content on their blog.
5. Pass the message along in Facebook, or Orkut or whatever social networking network you fancy.
6. Make a follow Friday list and continuously add good tweeps to it. Once you have such a list, you just need to remind your followers that they should check it out every once in a way. It’s a great idea to tweet this reminder every time you add five to ten new people to the list.
For now, I intend to continue #FF tweeting in a limited manner while I start work on writing a few words about my favourite tweeps. Expect that post late next week. In the mean time, I have some fun content lined up this week, so keep coming back!
Do you have any other ideas? What do you think of my reasoning? Would you agree with at least some of the points made here? In any case do let me know
