#FollowFriday - Downfall of a SuperTag...

If you know anything about Twitter you know about #FollowFriday.  This hashtag is one of the most commonly used on Twitter along with other favorites including #musicmonday and #fail.  This search pattern (#hashtag) allows the user to profile their favorite twitterers.  In many cases, this allows a follower to see other users that may be worth following.  It's a win win.  Right?   hmmph...

Lately, my feeds have shown this hashtag less and less on the past Fridays of 2010.  Where have they gone?  Why is something that once was a mainstream trending topic is now a seldom used triage for pinching at new followers?  I have addressed a few items here which may give light to why this is a 'weaning trend'.

My first observation is the sheer amount of time it takes to create a proper #FollowFriday.  To dissect a proper FollowFriday tweet you must adhere to a few rules.

1. The tweet must include #FollowFriday or #FF (or any combination of the capitalization you may find cute and unique that week)
2. You must use a mention to your follow worthy friends.  This often includes manually keying avatars or utilizing autocomplete functions that you find in HootSuite and Tweetdeck.
3. Optional:  Include a snippet of why your followers should follow them.  After all, you don't want to blindly lead someone astray if you think there is no 'real' value to be gained.  

It is simple to do, yet you can spend hours proofing and building these monster tweets while mentioning half the people you follow for different reasons.  A few of mine are simple.  I group my friends and offer them towards my speculative followers and in turn up their social capital for others to see.  I would simply mention all my photographer friends and say "#FollowFriday Fav Photogs @___ @___" and then serve this tweet to my followers.  Who knows what happened afterwards!  Sorry guys!  lol

It is very clear why #FollowFriday posts take time.  Large amounts of energy goes into this.  You can spend hours collecting your fav groups and sending them into this trending topic stream hoping they pick up a few value seeking followers.  

It is just not true.  Another observation stems from the success rate or ROI of #FF.  I personally stuck my friends out there for others to see they are quality twitterers and the stats just didn't compute.  Is it worth it? How do you measure this? You really start asking yourself these question when you log into your Twitter application and start thinking of #followfriday posts and cringe at the thought going through these motions (again).  This may very well be the common dislike shared by the novice to expert level twitterers that seek value.  

As a beginner, you made the time and found pride in building your friends follower list.  It's new and your friends were doing the same.  Your name was mentioned with some great company and you like the attention.  Then a few months pass and your efforts were colossal and your 'ROI' is minimal at best.  How do you gauge your success?   Do you poll your followers?  Simply ask, "Who has followed me from a #FollowFriday mention?"  No....you don't.

I often wonder, "If I would have spent more time managing valuable content instead of posting FollowFridays, would I have gained more 'real' followers?"  It is a question to ask next time you lean on the #ff keys.  

Albeit, #FollowFriday will not disappear.  It is still fun to show your followers who you would recommend and for what reasons.  But, unless I have gauged this trend incorrectly, time is against it as new twitterers become old pros and think of this more as a game than a tool for gaining followers.  

I will admit....I like seeing my favorite brands tweet my avatar among the many loyal fans and of course the homage that is paid by friends when your expertise has been sought after and found.

I would predict to see less and less of this hashtag in the future.

Cheers!

How to create a Yahoo Pipe to add to @HootSuite RSS/Atom feed

I briefly touched on the realm of spamming when I decided to look into adding content, or more specifically value, to my twitter accounts.  I strung several RSS feeds into usable outputs that helped me transmit new blog posts moments after they are posted.  To my surprise, this worked very well and I wanted more.

This automation feature is a great addition to my social realm.  As I wrote in “@HootSuite and the Social Media captive” ( http://ow.ly/12rvG ), I explained that monitoring feeds can be exhausting, especially when finding content that could relate to others.  @HootSuite allows for this RSS/Atom feed monitoring but also limits the feed area to 10 feeds.  As this may be plenty of room for a modest twitterer, I found 10 feeds were not enough.  Let me explain…

My need is to semi-automate a Twitter account (@AgileColumbus ) to spawn interest in others in the area on Agile Development and Methods. (note This account has been active for 4 months with hardly any use. I thought @HootSuite would be great to get info from blogs out there for others in one location).  This would also help me, too!  As I follow this feed I would stay on top of some of my favorite bloggers who lead this methodology and at the same time add “value” to a Twitter account to help others dive deeper into agile development and other notable methods.

Ok.  So, I have a problem.  I have 8 blogs bookmarked.  I also feed my blog posts and other notable blogs into my twitter account and that is more than @HootSuite would allow.  #spamfail   ;) 

So when @HootSuite recommended Yahoo Pipes I was eager to try something new.  My knowledge of RSS and other feedburner-esque sites is very limited but I was sure it would not be an issue and it turns out it is very EASY.  I went to yahoo.pipes.com and jumped right in…

Immediately, I am intimidated.  The first line I read is "Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web."  This is exactly what I was looking for.

I went directly to the main page. Logged in using my Yahoo! account and selected "Create a pipe" and called it "Agile Feeds".  The GUI is awesome.  It is clean and I feel like I can do something really cool here and I was right.

I dragged the visual component "Fetch Feed" over to graph paper area and started adding RSS/Atom feed URL's just like @HootSuite. Once I was finished adding the URLs in the ‘easy to use’ feed window, I dragged the small blue circle on the bottom of the Fetch Feed box and dragged it over to "Pipe Output". Click save and it returns a URL that links to the Pipe.  SWEET, all your feeds from one link and only one spot from @HootSuite is used.

In the end, visit My Pipes and go to your created pipe.  Once it loads, click ‘Get RSS’ and copy that URL on the page.  

Take the URL from Yahoo Pipes to @HootSuite and add it as a RSS/Atom feed and then DONE!

Pretty sweet! I know Pipes has potential to run conditional statements, do math and all kinds of automation to many things. Can you think of any other uses?

Enjoy your spamming!  >.<        (please do not spam!  ever!)

@HootSuite and the Social Media captive

You might wonder why I am taking the time to profile @HootSuite as I have only used it for one day.  Well, that's the reason.  I have only used this for one day and I already feel like I have a better hold on my reputable status in my social circle.  I have been held captive up to this moment by the abundance of information I would like to share and seem to have found the application that will help alleviate the need to find value to add to my social space and break some of my bad habits.

Do you have a bad habit online?  Ever worry about posting too much?  Ever thought about a possibility to auto-post a tweet before the biggest magnate media moguls such as @mashable or @guykawasaki post a whisper of the latest news?  Want to see how 'click-able' your links are to your followers or whether your links are even seen?  You may be surprised what links are clicked the most and which links fall short.

It is the nature of any user to try and understand your followers needs and creating value content for them besides showing them you are a human.  Balancing the two are really what separates the true good-will ambassadors who bring value to your network and those who spread any news in an effort to grab followers.  Finding a stable and useful plan to solidify your online presence is an important area of your online life and patience is the key.

With all this being said, my time with social media as a user has been limited but I feel comfortable with what I provide for my followers and friends after many 'spam' moments where I hit the feed hard for 10 minutes after a long absence.  Can I stack these to future posts/statuses/tweets or do I really have to punch them through in sequence?  You really do a disservice with the latter and your social circle cringes a bit.

@HootSuite is my new friend.  On the heels of a visit to North Carolina I had the chance to sit down with a social media watchdog.  Nathan Maxwell, better known as @socialshark, is a person who has a passion for social media and it's uses, and I got a glimpse of his passion.  It is apparent that what it takes to provide value is not just a barrage of information but an alliance of planning, tools and knowledge of what to look for to bring value to your feed. Nathan is ahead of many in the realm of managing feeds and his recommendation of @HootSuite is not overlooked...

Ok, enough about the why.  Here is the how.  @HootSuite is easy.  It's online and allows multiple accounts including Twitter, LinkedIn and facebook.  Do you think you have a bad habit of posting too many posts at one time and causing what others may see as 'Spam'?  Do you follow a blog and lean on this person to add value to your content?  Want to see how interesting your links are so you can provide better quality links to your circle?

Check out these features:

1.  So you have 20 posts and you need to run out the door!  You bite the bullet and click, click click....and all 20 posts light up your feed and you probably get a @reply saying, "Hey!  Stop spamming me!" and you apologize and continue.  No more spam!  @HootSuite allows you to "Send Later" or schedule the posts AND offers a "Pending Tweets" area to help manage the scheduled tweets. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Never blind your followers on twitter anymore.  This is also includes facebook updates.  You don't want facebook aggregating your posts into something similar to "Lucas Shaffer has posted 18 similar items."  You would rather have them post 19 items at intervals of 1 hour as to spread the info and make it less evasive.  Your friends will appreciate it.  Trust me!
   
   
   
   
2. RSS/Atom feeds are known for bringing the content to you, as soon as it hits the web!  If you haven't subscribed to a feed yet, it may be time to latch onto the updates of you favorite photographer/designer/developer.  By doing so you are receiving the latest update and this may be of value to your followers.  But how can you take your email updates and change them into relevant tweet/updates to your circle?  @HootSuite allows you to attach RSS and Atom feeds to schedule or immediately send tweets or updates.  This is nice!  This means a little less babysitting your favorite well of information and automatically porting this to you friends and followers.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   You can see here I am attaching @HootSuite to my blog so that my new blog posts will be fed into my feeding accounts.  In the example, my twitter space and facebook account will be updated with my new blog post without any extra work from me allowing me to stay focused on value of other posts. It is scheduled to fire the tweet and status update after a 3 hr interval which means @HootSuite automatically checks this feed every 3 hrs.  If the feed has produced 1 new post then @HootSuite post to my accounts immediately.  If the feed finds more than one I have a setting engaged to wait 1 hr to post each new feed until the new posts are done!  Easy and NO SPAM!  It may even appear to your followers that you are a madman and always on the site.  This is not true and you can get a bit of your life back!  ;)
   
   
   
   
3. If you already have an addiction to sites like twittercounter and twittergrader/facebookgrader then this part will make you feel all warm and fuzzy.  @HootSuite is affiliated with the ow.ly links you have seen everywhere.  It is in YOUR interest to start using the ow.ly URL shortening if you decide to chose @HootSuite.  The reason?  This is because @HootSuite tracks the amount of clicks these URL's you post to other sites or blogs and tracks them with your account.  Very nice!  Now you can see how valuable your links are.  You are now able to see if your followers are interested in the new Tech tweets that link to @engadget and if they respond to other types of links.  Here is what you get!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   You can see my blog seems to draw a bit more interest than the Lady Cougars win over Georgia!  :)  These type of stats are almost unheard of and if you have any other stats that can help build and nurture value in your feed then PLEASE let me know.
   
   
   
   

As you can see, I have only been using this FREE online app for 1 day and I have already been able to determine my impact with links, stop my bad habit of spamming and automate some of my own search results to give my followers better value, in incremental spoonfuls instead of gushes of 'blah'.

In the end, it has only been 1 day.  Let's see where this goes!


I would like to give credit to @socialshark for the heads up as I find his value to my social circle is a pillar to my reputation and I encourage others to follow him as well.  Find him here: http://twitter.com/socialshark