Image: Zazzle

Perhaps one of the more intriguing things on a Friday search of Twitter is the hash tag #followfriday or its shortened #ff and looking at people’s Follow Friday lists. If you are wondering what the heck Follow Friday is, you either have been under a rock, been locked out of social networking sites from your employer or just new to the scene. Hell, the hash tag has become so popular that CNN copied it for a weekly column called “follow friday.” You have to love the originality.

Basically Follow Friday is a way to introduce your following to people you feel are follow worthy. Some will blast out brands that they like, their friends or coworkers, deal/coupon sites or a list of, wait for it, gurus.  Having tried similar methods, I became bored with this basic premise and began to look for a way to make the weekly Tweet more valuable and engaging to the community.

The first foray into this was to plug the folks that I’d conversed with over the course of the week, unfortunately after a few weeks, this came repetitive as the same folks were plugged over and over. This led to passing along folks within the PR, marketing or SM advocates being passed along, again, this got boring. So instead of dropping this out of my weekly Tweetstream, I borrowed a page from everyone’s favorite childhood television show – Sesame Street.

While puppets would be cool, the feature borrowed was by having a letter sponsor the Tweet for the week. Doing this has a few benefits to it:

1. Folks get exposed to different people based on the week’s letter
2. List gets refreshed – for instance I look at everyone with the letter in my community and see how the interaction has been along with their last Tweet – I remove those that haven’t updated in over two weeks.
3. SPAM followers can be easily removed from list
4. Engagement across the network

For me those four factors allow me to give something back to the community while also adding in some nostalgia and fun into my Friday post. How do you #Followfriday?

No matter how you do it, the exercise is important to the evolution and growth of each and every one of our communities. It may be a tedious task, but it is all about sharing and growing said community.

Almost forgot, today’s post was presented by the letter X.

Image: Zazzle

Perhaps one of the more intriguing things on a Friday search of Twitter is the hash tag #followfriday or its shortened #ff and looking at people’s Follow Friday lists. If you are wondering what the heck Follow Friday is, you either have been under a rock, been locked out of social networking sites from your employer or just new to the scene. Hell, the hash tag has become so popular that CNN copied it for a weekly column called “follow friday.” You have to love the originality.

Basically Follow Friday is a way to introduce your following to people you feel are follow worthy. Some will blast out brands that they like, their friends or coworkers, deal/coupon sites or a list of, wait for it, gurus.  Having tried similar methods, I became bored with this basic premise and began to look for a way to make the weekly Tweet more valuable and engaging to the community.

The first foray into this was to plug the folks that I’d conversed with over the course of the week, unfortunately after a few weeks, this came repetitive as the same folks were plugged over and over. This led to passing along folks within the PR, marketing or SM advocates being passed along, again, this got boring. So instead of dropping this out of my weekly Tweetstream, I borrowed a page from everyone’s favorite childhood television show – Sesame Street.

While puppets would be cool, the feature borrowed was by having a letter sponsor the Tweet for the week. Doing this has a few benefits to it:

1. Folks get exposed to different people based on the week’s letter
2. List gets refreshed – for instance I look at everyone with the letter in my community and see how the interaction has been along with their last Tweet – I remove those that haven’t updated in over two weeks.
3. SPAM followers can be easily removed from list
4. Engagement across the network

For me those four factors allow me to give something back to the community while also adding in some nostalgia and fun into my Friday post. How do you #Followfriday?

No matter how you do it, the exercise is important to the evolution and growth of each and every one of our communities. It may be a tedious task, but it is all about sharing and growing said community.

Almost forgot, today’s post was presented by the letter X.

Image: Zazzle

Perhaps one of the more intriguing things on a Friday search of Twitter is the hash tag #followfriday or its shortened #ff and looking at people’s Follow Friday lists. If you are wondering what the heck Follow Friday is, you either have been under a rock, been locked out of social networking sites from your employer or just new to the scene. Hell, the hash tag has become so popular that CNN copied it for a weekly column called “follow friday.” You have to love the originality.

Basically Follow Friday is a way to introduce your following to people you feel are follow worthy. Some will blast out brands that they like, their friends or coworkers, deal/coupon sites or a list of, wait for it, gurus.  Having tried similar methods, I became bored with this basic premise and began to look for a way to make the weekly Tweet more valuable and engaging to the community.

The first foray into this was to plug the folks that I’d conversed with over the course of the week, unfortunately after a few weeks, this came repetitive as the same folks were plugged over and over. This led to passing along folks within the PR, marketing or SM advocates being passed along, again, this got boring. So instead of dropping this out of my weekly Tweetstream, I borrowed a page from everyone’s favorite childhood television show – Sesame Street.

While puppets would be cool, the feature borrowed was by having a letter sponsor the Tweet for the week. Doing this has a few benefits to it:

1. Folks get exposed to different people based on the week’s letter
2. List gets refreshed – for instance I look at everyone with the letter in my community and see how the interaction has been along with their last Tweet – I remove those that haven’t updated in over two weeks.
3. SPAM followers can be easily removed from list
4. Engagement across the network

For me those four factors allow me to give something back to the community while also adding in some nostalgia and fun into my Friday post. How do you #Followfriday?

No matter how you do it, the exercise is important to the evolution and growth of each and every one of our communities. It may be a tedious task, but it is all about sharing and growing said community.

Almost forgot, today’s post was presented by the letter X.

Image: Zazzle

Perhaps one of the more intriguing things on a Friday search of Twitter is the hash tag #followfriday or its shortened #ff and looking at people’s Follow Friday lists. If you are wondering what the heck Follow Friday is, you either have been under a rock, been locked out of social networking sites from your employer or just new to the scene. Hell, the hash tag has become so popular that CNN copied it for a weekly column called “follow friday.” You have to love the originality.

Basically Follow Friday is a way to introduce your following to people you feel are follow worthy. Some will blast out brands that they like, their friends or coworkers, deal/coupon sites or a list of, wait for it, gurus.  Having tried similar methods, I became bored with this basic premise and began to look for a way to make the weekly Tweet more valuable and engaging to the community.

The first foray into this was to plug the folks that I’d conversed with over the course of the week, unfortunately after a few weeks, this came repetitive as the same folks were plugged over and over. This led to passing along folks within the PR, marketing or SM advocates being passed along, again, this got boring. So instead of dropping this out of my weekly Tweetstream, I borrowed a page from everyone’s favorite childhood television show – Sesame Street.

While puppets would be cool, the feature borrowed was by having a letter sponsor the Tweet for the week. Doing this has a few benefits to it:

1. Folks get exposed to different people based on the week’s letter
2. List gets refreshed – for instance I look at everyone with the letter in my community and see how the interaction has been along with their last Tweet – I remove those that haven’t updated in over two weeks.
3. SPAM followers can be easily removed from list
4. Engagement across the network

For me those four factors allow me to give something back to the community while also adding in some nostalgia and fun into my Friday post. How do you #Followfriday?

No matter how you do it, the exercise is important to the evolution and growth of each and every one of our communities. It may be a tedious task, but it is all about sharing and growing said community.

Almost forgot, today’s post was presented by the letter X.