What Everybody Ought to Know about #FollowFriday

I know I have been preaching about twitter and how it is a great place to connect. You can connect on twitter just about every day, but Fridays are special days to connect. This day usually, I see the highest increase in my followers, and an increase in the number of people that I am following as well. Every friday, after I post my #followfriday tweet, I get a reply from someone asking me what is #followfriday.

P.S. Make sure you follow Dom at @iloxy he is a cool guy.

Well obviously I replied to him via twitter, but I thought since I wrote an Ultimate Guide to Retweet, I should write a post about FollowFriday as well because this is something that is getting bigger and bigger by every week.

What is #FollowFriday

FollowFriday is one of the most popular Twitter Memes. It is a group thing where everyone suggests the people they care about to others. People they think are cool, People that are interesting, People who are resourceful and so on.

The idea is that you refer good people to others, and everyone is doing that. So you can make more connections during Friday then any other day because you see new people. But there is also a trend that you will see that some of the popular users on twitter get mentioned in just about everyone’s followfriday. No matter what, you will also see a few new interesting people each time.

History of #FollowFriday: How did FollowFriday Started

It wasn’t long ago that this concept started. Actually to be exact it was started on January 16, 2009. When Micah Baldwin tweeted:

Almost immidiately afterwards, Mykl Roventine suggested to add hashtag to this idea, and the next thing you know is that hundreds of thousands of people are doing it. They are all recommending their good friends to their other followers and making the network bigger.

How You can #Followfriday

There are really no rules to it except try to add a hashtag #Followfriday. You can suggest as many friends you like. Or just suggest a few people. It is entirely upto you. You can write detailed stuff about your friends in a tweet for example:

#FollowFriday Check out @syedbalkhi – Good Designer, Blogger, SEM, WP Geek, and most importantly a Great Friend.

Or you can simply just make a huge list of friends in a tweet:

#FollowFriday @syedbalkhi @mayhemstudios @mlane @paviles @andysowards @curiouslt @devongovett @mistygirlph @Bites85 @brandonacox

These are just two examples I am mentioning. You can be creative and do it however you want it done. Just make sure you add the Hashtag #FollowFriday

Advantages and Disadvantages of #FollowFriday

Like everything there is advantages to FollowFriday and there are disadvantages to FollowFriday. Lets begin with the advantages first.

Advantages

- You Increase Your Follower Count and Build Your Network

Obviously when you are being mentioned by other people, their followers and friend will see it, and they will most likely follow you. This way your follower count will increase. But most importantly, you will make new friends and possibly connections for your business.

Disadvantages

- You Lose Followers

Yes FollowFriday can make you lose your followers also. For instance, I am following 900+ people, and I have over 1100 followers. I can’t list all of them in one friday, my whole day will end. So some people get pissed off because you didn’t mention them, which will result in them unfollowing you. Another way you lose followers is if you fill your entire page with #FollowFriday tweets which gets annoying for some of your followers. Which will lead them to unfollow you.

What Policy I take?

Well I am not one of the people who won’t opt-in because I appreciate my followers. I try to share the followers who contributed the most for the current week. Users who I had the most conversation with during the week. I think everyone should opt-in to this Tweet Meme and share the love on the Fridays.

Well now you should know everything there is to know about #FollowFriday. I hope you keep me in your minds when you do the #FollowFriday today on twitter If you haven’t already join twitter, then see 25 Reasons Why Someone Should Join Twitter. And once you join don’t forget to Follow Me at @syedbalkhi.