Follow Friday on Twitter: How to use this trend and hashtag effectively

If you have been on Twitter on any given Friday, you have undoubtedly seen the hashtag #FollowFriday or #FF followed by a bunch of @username @username @username (...).  Right?

If you don't know, hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.  Hashtags are just like tags on a blog or images, only they are added inline to your tweet.  For more information on hashtags, visit hashtag.org.

So what is #FollowFriday all about?  Well, the point of Follow Friday is to share with the Twitterverse your favorite Twitter users so that they too can follow these people.  It is essentially a way to discover new friends and contacts through the platform.  The expected and most effective use of the #FollowFriday or #FF hashtags would be to compile a few of your favorite Twitter users and tweet something like this:

#FollowFriday @TRAVSocialMedia @DrumMarketing @TRAVhodges @twitter @facebook (...) #FF

By including both forms of the hashtag, you ensure anyone participating in Follow Friday is able to search and find your tweet, which is essentially the goal of the whole trend.  It is very simple to participate in Follow Friday, and it is a great way to share those you follow as well as to discover other interesting users.  Just keep in mind, the trend is to share interesting and engaging users with your followers, not to spam the Twitterverse.  If you use the trend to push your own products and services constantly, you will undoubtedly lose followers and no one will end up following your Follow Friday suggestions in the future.  Remember, Twitter is all about sharing information and content, use it, don't abuse it  ;-)

Now come on, what's stopping you?  Try it out this and every Friday!  Good luck!

P.S. - I never mind a #FollowFriday mention if you enjoy the blog and my tweets!