I've had a twitter account for nearly two years but only got active this past December and didn't start participating in #ff until the past couple of months. There is much social interaction involved in the ritual but also a lot of work.
The more you interact with people here the more you start feeling like you have a personal relationship with a growing number of them all.
After you get your first half dozen 'bulk' follows as I call them, where your name is one of a bunch, then the thrill of getting one more is quite over already.
The whole 'bulk' #ff does seem like it is totally ineffective, especially when the #ff tweet starts with just a word or two and a #ff followed by as many names fit in the remaining space.
By now we have all seen much more creative 'bulk' #ff from the likes of people such as @EzKool. Those still have 4 to 6 names per tweet but are at least preceded by something that will give you a chuckle or even make you think; Well, at least the first time you see them.
But even with that sweetener I'm still not sure it makes you more inclined to follow anyone mentioned. I do think that it gets more followers for anyone who's doing the #ff recommend. And I do think the new followers you get by giving 'bulk' #ffs are good #p2 followers not bots or trolls.
A couple of weeks ago I started mixing up my bulk #ff with some 'single' one person per tweet follow recommends. My priority for the 'single' #ff's are the peeps I interact with and more importantly the ones I feel are focused on a particular issue or issues.
I also like to push people just starting out that only have a few followers and have a message that's worth a follow. What I noticed was that I was having as much fun getting creative with those single #ff's as I do my regular tweeting. More often than not I check their bio, edit with some personal context and send it out as a #ff.
I find that I put more time and effort into those single #ff than I do composing my regular tweets. Therefore those tweets are much more meaningful to me as well it appears to the people they were written for. With the time I started putting into writing the tweets I decided to start saving them to a file. Then I could reuse them with a little freshening as the case may call for. With such positive feedback its made me want to do more and more single; less and less bulk. Also, I started doing them throughout the week. Yeah, many more on Friday but lots during the week now.
On this Friday, I started realizing how much work all of this was becoming as well as how other messages kept popping up into my consciousness that I wanted to push besides just #ff. I also noticed that when I was doing the #ff thang I wasn't really getting new followers to speak of but when I started in on one of my political rants the followers would start popping up in my email box.
The more you interact with people here the more you start feeling like you have a personal relationship with a growing number of them all.
After you get your first half dozen 'bulk' follows as I call them, where your name is one of a bunch, then the thrill of getting one more is quite over already.
The whole 'bulk' #ff does seem like it is totally ineffective, especially when the #ff tweet starts with just a word or two and a #ff followed by as many names fit in the remaining space.
By now we have all seen much more creative 'bulk' #ff from the likes of people such as @EzKool. Those still have 4 to 6 names per tweet but are at least preceded by something that will give you a chuckle or even make you think; Well, at least the first time you see them.
But even with that sweetener I'm still not sure it makes you more inclined to follow anyone mentioned. I do think that it gets more followers for anyone who's doing the #ff recommend. And I do think the new followers you get by giving 'bulk' #ffs are good #p2 followers not bots or trolls.
A couple of weeks ago I started mixing up my bulk #ff with some 'single' one person per tweet follow recommends. My priority for the 'single' #ff's are the peeps I interact with and more importantly the ones I feel are focused on a particular issue or issues.
I also like to push people just starting out that only have a few followers and have a message that's worth a follow. What I noticed was that I was having as much fun getting creative with those single #ff's as I do my regular tweeting. More often than not I check their bio, edit with some personal context and send it out as a #ff.
I find that I put more time and effort into those single #ff than I do composing my regular tweets. Therefore those tweets are much more meaningful to me as well it appears to the people they were written for. With the time I started putting into writing the tweets I decided to start saving them to a file. Then I could reuse them with a little freshening as the case may call for. With such positive feedback its made me want to do more and more single; less and less bulk. Also, I started doing them throughout the week. Yeah, many more on Friday but lots during the week now.
On this Friday, I started realizing how much work all of this was becoming as well as how other messages kept popping up into my consciousness that I wanted to push besides just #ff. I also noticed that when I was doing the #ff thang I wasn't really getting new followers to speak of but when I started in on one of my political rants the followers would start popping up in my email box.
Along the way it started to dawn on me that it might be more effective to post my growing collection of single #ff's here on the 'Tweet Stuff on #P2'
I also started noticing that if I didn't have room to put the #ff hash tag, I just left it out rather than edit my other content down to fit it in. I started to realize that most people could care less about that being on there. Some people may care about their Klout score or other grade cards but I'm not really one of them and I think most people do not. I've never done a #ff search nor opened up a #ff column on tweetdeck. When I'm doing a 'single' follow recommend the whole tweet screams 'follow this person' so the hast tag is redundant.
Today, March 26, the only bulk ones I sent were for those who had included me in their bulk follows. It was a rewarding experience sending out all of the 'single' follow I was able to squeeze in.
I love it when people give me positive feed back like when they get caught off guard with big praise for them or when someone tweets back and says they are following that person because of my recommendation.
I also started noticing that if I didn't have room to put the #ff hash tag, I just left it out rather than edit my other content down to fit it in. I started to realize that most people could care less about that being on there. Some people may care about their Klout score or other grade cards but I'm not really one of them and I think most people do not. I've never done a #ff search nor opened up a #ff column on tweetdeck. When I'm doing a 'single' follow recommend the whole tweet screams 'follow this person' so the hast tag is redundant.
Today, March 26, the only bulk ones I sent were for those who had included me in their bulk follows. It was a rewarding experience sending out all of the 'single' follow I was able to squeeze in.
I love it when people give me positive feed back like when they get caught off guard with big praise for them or when someone tweets back and says they are following that person because of my recommendation.
Love it!
