One of my twitter mentors recently shared with me the very real fear that twitter is like talking to people with ADHD. You know exactly what is being referred to. If one disappears from twitter for too long, one simply ceases to exist. Everyone's stream marches on quite quickly. Someone who hasn't tweeted in the last couple of days will simply have no tweets show up in one's stream. If you have some busy lists like I do, that time frame reduces to hours. Maybe one tries to make up some lists of particular friends to hold on to their tweets a bit longer in the stream, but that is only a stopgap measure.
The one place one can hold on a bit longer is one's mention (@ message) column. Okay, for the true top tweeters who get tons of mentions even that doesn't work. However, that's a different problem. For an average person, even one who tries to be active on twitter, one generally can keep track of one's mentions.
That really helps when Follow Friday comes along. Even if you've had a bad week and you haven't had nearly the time to tweet things like you wanted, if you go to your mentions column after a Friday, you can see those who remembered you despite your absence. Those are some of your truest twitter friends. The time you take to thank them or RT them will be well rewarded.
In fact, this works particularly true for those who Follow Friday a list of names, at least for those who use a list of names to group people who are similar. Those people are like the core of one's friends group. They are the people who keep the group together.
Thus, if you find yourself on one of those Follow Friday lists, here is something simple you can do. Use an old-style retweet to forward the list, starting it with thanks (THX or TY) if there is space. Make sure you include the original senders name, and remove your own name. If you do that, you are remembering the person who started the trend to all of their friends for your retweet will show up in all their mentions column too.
Now, clearly this can get carried away. In fact many of the twitter elite got away from Follow Friday lists because they were getting out of hand.
Here are some rules of thumb to keep from turning Follow Friday into a problem.
- Don't forwards lists from tweeps you don't know, especially not when the lists contains entirely tweeps you don't know. Spammers have been known to use that technique to build up followers.
- Don't generate overly long Follow Friday lists yourself, especially not every week. If we all keep our lists down to those we truly respect and our friends with, they won't get carried away. If we try to use Follow Friday lists as a way of growing our own followers it won't work well.
- Do consider following people on the lists you receive, especially if you already follow most of the people on the list and the list is from someone you respect. These are your potential new friends and the whole reason for Follow Friday in the first place.
- Be particularly aware of the people who send the same (or roughly the same) list each week. These are the people who have identified you as part of a specific group. You can take that as a stronger recommendation of the other people on the list.
- If you are preparing your own Follow Friday tweets, mix them up a little, especially if you do more than one. Put different tweeters together on different weeks. Add a new friend you've found to the list. That will help your friends see the larger circle they are within and keep their circles gorwing.
To close, I'd like to mention some tweeps who've done a particularly good job of keeping the Follow Friday spirit alive. These friends have helped me through many a rough week and introduced me to other tweeters I would not have met otherwise.
@CyberSafeFamily
@FortaliceLLC
@MaryKayHoal
@MomsMaterial
@RonaldTi
@rootnl2k
@SaferDates
@SpectrumPestInc
@Strykerdlh
@SueScheff
@TalkToanIT
@techranter
@TheTeenDoc
@2morrowknight
@TrimuphCISO
