What is #FollowFriday on Twitter?

I saw a friend of mine the other day and he looked at me funny and asked me, “Tim, just what the heck does #followfriday mean”?   He had seen this on my Facebook page and had no idea what it meant.

After a quick chuckle I realized that many of the terms that I use everyday in my business just don’t make sense to many of my friends who are not involved in internet marketing.

So feeling bad for excluding him, I quickly explained what #followfriday meant and how it is used on Twitter, one of the web’s most popular social networking sites.

So if you don’t know what #followfriday, hashtags, and Twitter are, here is a quick explanation;

• Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites that allows you to set up a free profile and connect with other people.  People that use Twitter are often called “Twitterers” or “Tweeps” or “Tweethearts”.
• Twitter allows you to update your “what are you doing” status in 140 characters or less.  This is called a “Tweet”
• To engage other “Tweeps” in conversation, include the “@” symbol in front of their Twitter name.
• “#” is called a hashtag.  This is used when people what to associate their “Tweet” with a particular subject, event, show, etc.  This is then easily searched by going to Twitter Search and typing in the “#” + “followfriday” (example).  This is a great way to track all conversations happening around that particular topic
• “#followfriday” happens on Fridays and is used in a Tweet when one Twitterer wants to recommend that you follow another Twitter.
• Here’s an example that I used today: “If you’re not following @MichealSavoie, you should be. He is very much a servant at heart #followfriday”

If you’d like to know more about Twitter, I recommend a good starting point is a book by @JoelComm called Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

You can also check out a recent video blog post about social networking sites and whether to connect or not.

Social networking is one of the best ways to develop relationships online for your business.  I highly recommend that you get started right away.

If you need help setting up and implementing a social networking strategy for your company, let us know and we’d be happy to talk about the options with you.