Automate your #FollowFriday posts – and do it right
June 19, 2009
- Twitter: How to use it effectively and why it matters
- Twitter: deciding when to acquire multiple personality disorder also known as multiple accounts
- Bad Twitter habits that will get you unfollowed with no notice – excessive stream of quotes and abuse of Twitterfeed
- Automate your #FollowFriday posts – and do it right
Unlike most Twitter activity, #FollowFriday can be tedious and should be automated
I am working on something more interesting to solve this problem, but in the interim I wanted to share my solution on #FollowFriday.
First of all, what is #FollowFriday?
#FollowFriday is one of Twitter’s most well-known memes. What you do is post a tweet about someone who you think your followers will appreciate following and include #FollowFriday somewhere in that tweet.
Example: “#FollowFriday @Wiseleo posts incredibly useful Twitter articles and is an all-around marketing and computer genius”
What is the wrong way to do #FollowFriday?
This is wrong: #FollowFriday @VirginAmerica @JetBlue @loic @twikini @pocketwit @elliottkember @twifferfox @startuppro @TheIceStorm @mattcutts @PerryMashall @seotips2go
I’ve just given you a list of pretty cool people, but you have no idea who they are and why they should be followed.
The likelihood of you following them is very low, right? Multiply this by 100 more tweets like this, and you’ll be saying “OK, how do I unfollow this person?”.
Another wrong way “@wiseleo is a really cool Tweep and you should follow him #FollowFriday”
This one is subtle. By starting your tweet with “@wiseleo”, you have limited its visibility only to those who already follow you and at the same time follow wiseleo. Since the objective is to introduce someone new, the end result is almost non-existent other than to draw attention to that person.
The correct way is to personally recommend someone
Here is an excerpt of my followfriday.txt
#FollowFriday @nichelady – Fun to follow and #entrepreneur #branding #marketing
#FollowFriday (VC) @davemcclure @fredwilson @bfeld @thefunded @pehub @jeffnolan @pkedrosky @guykawasaki @howardlindzon #vc #funding
#FollowFriday (VC part 2) @andrewhyde @florianseroussi @venturehacks @vcmike – #vc #funding
#FollowFriday @lovehowto – interesting & sometimes controversial articles @bonjourvanae – host of video #dating show http://bit.ly/14aIrB
#FollowFriday @perrybelcher – #Copywriter. Check out his blog http://bit.ly/sQPUg
#FollowFriday @djrustik – He creates interesting music to which I enjoy listening http://bit.ly/TB5ED
#FollowFriday @pud – Remember f–kedcompany.com? That’s him! I still need to get my copy autographed… #entrepreneur #startup
#FollowFriday @markpeterdavis – Venture capitalist and author of an extremely
insightful #blog for #startup founders #vc #funding
- #FollowFriday @nichelady – Fun to follow and #entrepreneur #branding #marketing
- #FollowFriday (VC) @davemcclure @fredwilson @bfeld @thefunded @pehub @jeffnolan @pkedrosky @guykawasaki @howardlindzon #vc #funding
- #FollowFriday (VC part 2) @andrewhyde @florianseroussi @venturehacks @vcmike – #vc #funding
- #FollowFriday @lovehowto – interesting & sometimes controversial articles @bonjourvanae – host of video #dating show http://bit.ly/14aIrB
- #FollowFriday @perrybelcher – #Copywriter. Check out his blog http://bit.ly/sQPUg
- #FollowFriday @djrustik – He creates interesting music to which I enjoy listening http://bit.ly/TB5ED
- #FollowFriday @pud – Remember f–kedcompany.com? That’s him! I still need to get my copy autographed… #entrepreneur #startup
- #FollowFriday @markpeterdavis – Venture capitalist and author of an extremely insightful #blog for #startup founders #vc #funding
Notice that every tweet has some actionable information about the person or brand I am recommending. I also add hashtags where appropriate to further promote that person.
I did recommend a group of related people in the above example, but I qualified it with who they are (venture capitalists) and with a few hashtags to further give them the right exposure.
That is quite different from a list of random names.
For most of my recommendations, I tend to give the person an introduction and sometimes link to their website.
Manually recommending over 100 people every week is quite tiresome. Computers were invented to eliminate repetitive manual tasks.
My solution is to use TweetLater
This tool is commonly misunderstood as something that is the bane of our existance due to its ability to send auto DMs to new followers. I personally hate those and see zero value in them.
Needless to say, I don’t use that feature.
Any tool they can be misused. While there are many other Twitter marketing tools, one great feature of TweetLater lets me upload a file of tweets and have them sent automatically at a specified time with a specified interval.
Did I mention that’s a free feature?
Interval sending is important because regardless of how useful your information is to your followers, you don’t want to dominate their stream with 10 updates per refresh cycle. Many marketers don’t even realize that is what’s causing them to lose followers. We aren’t even marketing here! We are simply trying to recommend our most interesting friends to our other friends without interfering with their stream and without tying up our day.
My recommendation for #FollowFriday tweets is to space them out 3 minutes apart.
Sure, it’ll take 5 hours to post your #FollowFriday list if you have 100 people to recommend, but you will also spread your recommendations across multiple Twitter activity zones. More of your followers will see your tweets and follow your friends. Twitter software tends to be set to auto-refresh at 2-5 minute intervals.
By spacing our tweets with a 3-minute interval, we will send exactly one tweet per refresh. That increases the visibility of your recommendations. It is far more effective to send 5 tweets over 15 minutes than to dump 5 tweets in 1 second.
In my experience, people who have been recommended with a personalized message are more likely to return the favor to you.
You need to maintain a file with all your endorsements
Here are some easy ways to figure out whom you may want to recommend:
- People with whom you’ve traded @replies
- People whose tweets you re-tweet
- People who are your fans and already recommend you
- Industry thought leaders
It is important that your tweet be shorter than 120 characters. You want to give others room to re-tweet it.
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About the author
Leonid S. Knyshov (@wiseleo) writes about social media and other topics of interest on http://Knyshov.com
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Hey! Good tips! That's a lot of insights on #followfriday. People don't like lists. They like to know people and why they are so great. Tweetlater is a good service, but their interface is SOOO un-userfriendly. I wonder when will they improve that.
Btw, I saw that your blog is ranked number 2 in our Viralogy technology section (that's how I found you). Good job for sure! Keep it up
Hi Yu-kai,
It's nice to be highly ranked, especially in the \”All time\” section thanks
Tweetlater's interface is geared toward expert users. It's great for
those of us who have multiple campaigns to manage. It can definitely
be overwhelming for novices. I'd say the experience is similar to the
first exposure to a tool like Excel. You can do simple things right
away, but the complex features can take a while to get used to.
I am working on a competing solution for novice users and will
announce it when it's ready. If you can type a line of text into a
text file, you can use that product.
Leonid