What is Follow Friday?
As Ron [Hubel] so aptly states above, “Follow Friday on Twitter is a little tradition they have every Friday where people recommend to their followers other people to follow.” Basically, we give a shout out to people we respect, find interesting, or are otherwise not annoying. On a platform that is “me, me, me” all the time – we take a break and ritualistically show some humility by shamelessly promoting our friends.
Where did it all begin?
#FollowFriday was launched into the stratosphere by @micah back in January ’09 with a simple tweet recommending two of his friends for his followers to follow. The rest, well, is history. Today there are well over 250,000 #FollowFriday tweets sent out every Friday!
Who cares?
The main reason #FollowFriday has turned into such a wide-spread Twitter phenomenon? ROI. In short, people want followers (you can argue with me on this point that the number of followers doesn’t matter – but let’s face it, none of us mind if we end up with thousands of followers. More followers equals more eyes on whatever you’re putting out there. You invest time suggesting other people in hopes they’ll invest their time suggesting you, thus completing the Follow Friday circle of life. It’s simple and when all is said and done, it works – I’ve met some great folks based on a Follow Friday recommendation and I’m sure you have too.
What makes you follow-worthy?
Ultimately, to earn the respect and recognition of others, you not only have to be putting out some great content yourself – you need to be a resource in whatever your field may be – this is especially true from a business perspective. If I’m an indie-coffee shop on Twitter, I don’t want to focus solely on the brew of the day at my shop – I want to talk about community events, share some fun facts about coffee, talk about the music that’s playing in the shop – topics and information that is relevant to my target consumer. When you do that, people not only depend on you for your own business information, but rather as an overall community resource. Those who achieve ‘thought leadership’ in their respective field or area of interest are the ones who get mega #FollowFriday love. And as we all know, that’s what life is all about – getting a few compliments before we head into our weekend. “Making new friends…in a forceful, aggressive way.”
What’s your #FollowFriday philosophy?