Twitter has a reputation for being full of people telling you what they had for breakfast or commenting on the weather. It’s true, there is a lot of that about.
You’ll also see a lot of tweets that include #ff or #FF (the # hashtag makes it a clickable link to all tweets with the same keyword). It stands for Follow Friday, as a Twitter tradition has evolved where you recommend people to follow, you guessed it, every Friday.
Many Twitter-users just tweet #ff along with a list of names, but that doesn’t give you any clue about why you should follow them, and I doubt that it has any effect.
The correct protocol is to structure your tweet like this:
#ff @username [reason]
For example:
#ff @jackiebarrie because her tweets are as fabulous as she is!
If you sell a product, you want reviews. If selling a service, you want testimonials. If selling yourself (e.g. on LinkedIn), you want recommendations. And on Twitter, you want FFs.
It’s flattering to be FFed, because it means someone has taken the trouble to recommend you. Because of that, you’ll also notice people tweeting repeated public ‘thank yous’. I can’t see the point of that myself, and prefer to thank people privately by DM (Direct Message) if at all.
Netiquette tip: Note that you are not obliged to #ff people in return, although some probably hope you will!
