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Have you ever been the lucky recipient of a #followfriday or #ff from a friend on Twitter?

It’s a great feeling when someone goes out of their way to recognize you as a resource for great insight and connection on Twitter. Recognition for being someone worth following is great for those trying to figure out the point of Twitter.

However, the common practice for a typical #followfriday tweet is to pack as many of your favorite followers into 140 as possible. While this strategy is great for pinging people in your network to let them know you’re thinking of them, it also can appear cheap and potentially a little off putting if the group of folks you include don’t have much in common.

Now, it’s rare that folks are actually offended by being included in a #followfriday. Most do in fact love to be included and recognized in some way by their followers. Some may even get a few new followers because of the referral.

As with most situations in life, however, #followfriday offers people the opportunity to cut through the noise with valuable tweets that create signal and meaning for folks.

The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success
Something folks love even more than simply having their Twitter handle included in a mass #ff tweet is when someone devotes an entire tweet to something they specifically peg as a reason to follow somebody.

By taking an extra five minutes to break apart your #ff tweets and doing individual #ff tweets instead, you’re showing your followers that you value something specific about what they’re doing. It’s another level of respect you’re paying forward to the folks you value in your Twitter stream.

Rules
1) Use the entire 120 or so characters (How to Get Retweeted – The Formula) to describe something specific and amazing about the people whose tweets you value the most. For my handle (@dayneshuda) I can get away with leaving 15 characters available.

2) Include #ff

3) Include a Website (preferably the actual URL vs. a shortened version…for branding)

4) Give a specific reason for people to follow

Examples

Benefits of Going the Extra Mile
I’ve been trying to do this each Friday (although I do miss some) for some of my favorite folks on Twitter and the response has been wonderful and more than I could have imagined.

The folks that I highlight in detailed #followfridays are generally very thankful to be highlighted in a specific way. They seem to appreciate that someone takes the time to recognize their hard work in a field or for being a great friend and someone worth following because of their personality.

Sometimes in response (but never expected) folks have responded with similar, detailed tweets about me. It’s a nice little bonus for making the gesture.

What about your #ff experiences?

Do you leave detailed #ff tweets or the more popular styled #ff tweets?

What are some pros and cons of each?

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I have a love/hate relationship with TweetDeck. While TweetDeck is a great tool that does so many things so well (the Love), it doesn’t do everything I want and need it to do and it still suffers from some pretty annoying technical issues (the Hate).

To be sure, some of those issues involve Twitter itself earning Team TweetDeck kudos for dealing with the limitations of the Twitter platform. After all, it isn’t easy coming up with the next earth-shattering, must have, whiz-bang feature when the platform you’re dependent upon not always reliable. It’s also no small challenge when your primary competitor, Seesmic, is aggressively introducing new features (listen to Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur give me Exclusive Seesmic News during my podcast interview last week on Addicted to Social Media). (more…)

I was asked recently about the task of managing multiple Twitter accounts and if it’s better to use your own name or an “imaginary name.”

It’s not the first time I’ve had the question asked, so I thought what better way to answer it than by sharing it with everyone here on Twitip.

Absolutes Don’t Exist

I’ll first be honest in saying that there isn’t a black and white answer, and this isn’t something that can be solved without testing. Too many people treat Twitter with black and white answers… with absolutes. (more…)

Most users of Twitter and other social media sites would agree that it’s about communication. What does that mean? Dictionary.com would say “the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information.” Are you doing that – exchanging thoughts and opinions? Or, are you trying to sell your product/service by bombarding your followers with sales pitches and product promotions?

YOU vs. ME
Consider this. Are you using “I” or “we” more than “you” and “your”? Likewise, how much to do you enjoy sitting with someone, a stranger perhaps, and listening to them talk all about themselves and how wonderful they or their business are? Not very much. That’s the way sales via Twitter come across. If you’re constantly talking about yourself, not sharing information or news, etc. people will start to tune you out and your following will dwindle. (more…)

With so many websites, blogs and books available on how to use twitter effectively, I’ve yet to see anyone dedicate an article, post or page on “How to Fight on Twitter“.  And there’s a perfectly good explanation for that–you just don’t do it. When you have a huge social media platform like twitter at your disposal, why would you want to use your 140 characters to spread verbal garbage in a viral way? Shouldn’t we use this tool in a positive manner? But twitter fights are happening daily, in fact I’ve experienced two twitter fights in my twittering career and so this a tale of “Why NOT to fight on Twitter” and the three reasons why. (more…)

Well if you don’t track twitter then you would not have heard this story of Conan O’Brien following a random girl from the twitter neighborhood named Sarah Killen. Sarah Killen had just 3 followers before Conan started following her.

To announce the event of following someone randomly Conan tweeted “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.” That was the best part of the story and after that Sarah has been rubbing her status next to celebrities with lots of tv interviews and MTV appearances.

From just 3 followers to over 20000 followers (at the time of writing this post) she is growing and she is growing fast. At the personal level, she and her fiancé had been announcing the amount of gifts they have been receiving after Conan made them famous.

After the famous out cry even Sarah’s Mom has come on the twitter and named her account promptly as Sarahkmom. Who knows Conan may even follow her.

Kinda cool, eh? She’s been on all sorts of news programs now, and getting tons of attention. On Good Morning America this morning, Sarah’s fiancé announced a request that Conan be the best man at his wedding!

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Every new car has a manual in its glove compartment. Software applications have a help link when you get stuck or want to learn more about a feature. User assistance is part of our web and so is Twitter. How can Twitter can be useful for technical writers, trainers, or web publishers who provide customer support or technical education? (more…)

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I was sitting in a coffee shop near work as I often do between sessions when one of the baristas sheepishly approached me. I go in there all the time, so most of them know me by face, if not by name. She said, “Are you Jeff?” I answered in the affirmative and she goes, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”

My first thought was that it must be work calling to tell me that there’s been a schedule change. AT&T has spectacularly terrible coverage and this cafe could be a dead zone. One look at my phone confirmed that I was five-bars strong and I had no missed calls. She looked as quizzical as I felt. I took the cordless phone from her and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello?

Stranger: Is this Jeff? (more…)

If you follow a lot of people on Twitter, you have probably already faced an information overload problem. When choosing who to follow, you would probably read their recent tweets and decide if the person is interesting to you. But not all the people always tweet about something as important or interesting for you as when you decided to follow them.

As the number of people you follow grows, the number of junk tweets that you get in your Friends Timeline grows as much or even faster. So after a time, you end up with never ending stream of some tweets most of which are not even close to what you actually hoped to read. The situation gets worse when the people you follow are your friends and you don’t want to offend them by clicking the ‘Unfollow’ button. (more…)