It’s Friday! Which means only one thing! No, not just that the weekend has landed and it’s time for Friday beers. It means it’s my least favourite Twitter day.
#FF stands for Follow Friday. Friday has been heralded as the day to suggest Twitter users that others should follow. All sounds lovely doesn’t it? You’d be really pleased to get an #FF wouldn’t you, if someone was suggesting that others follow you?
Except it’s gone too far…
Now on Fridays you will see lists and lists of twitter usernames with an #FF thrown in. No reason why you should follow these people. Simply a list of users.
Now for me this really goes against the whole idea of #FF. You’re suggesting users that we should follow so tell us why!!!! Plus it makes reading tweets on Friday pretty boring!!
But then even reasons for following can sometimes get on my wick! Some users somehow find the time on a Friday to list practically all their followers with a reason you should follow them. And sometimes the reasoning goes as far as ‘because I tweeted with them this week’. So???!!!! Why does that mean I should follow them?!
If you do want to join in with #FF, I would suggest to approach it in this manner. Spend no more than 30 seconds picking one person (we all have more important stuff to get on with at the end of the day!). When you make it clear that you only pick one person each week, that person is going to feel pretty special, which is great for engagement. It also means you can give us a great reason why we should also follow them, such as ‘this person’s Twitter tips have saved my life! Follow them so yours can be saved too!’. I can guarantee people will follow that person then!
I know this blog post is pretty controversial! Most people love #FF! So, if you’re going to get involved, please make it something more worthwhile than a list of users.
Oh, by the way….my followers have never increased as a result of #FF any more than they do on any other day!!
