| These notes are based on the opinions and observations of Carl Watts and may not be accurate or true. (If you are brand new on Twitter start with How to Start Twitter & Rapidly Grow and follow up with Twitter Basic Tips.) First here are the official “FollowFriday” Rules: http://www.followfriday.com/content/ranking-rules I have asked for clarification of a couple point and by email and by @ing them. They have never replied. So I ceased trying. Let me define FollowFriday as I understand it. FollowFriday is a game that counts the number of mentions of you that contain #FF or #FollowFriday. A solo mention counts for 150 points. A mention of you and another, gives you 75 points, the other person gets the other 75 points. The official ranking rules are here: http://www.followfriday.com/content/ranking-rules So the long and short of it is, it is a game. If you score well, you look good and it gets you attention. Why I play FollowFriday based on my plan as outlined in “New Civilization” (new and updated 7/9/11) and "How and Why I use Twitter". Part of my game is to help you win at your game, my cause is to promote your cause. If you win, humanity is stronger! FollowFriday allows me to promote you, my followers, that have promoted me. expansion and my ability to impact more people. This makes my promotion of you more effective. In turn, as you grow, your promotion of me gets more effective. It is a win win win win situation where no one loses. Having probably over spoken, here is how I play FollowFriday. UPDATE 05/21/11 I use Google Chrome. For several months, I really haven't fully closed it and somehow a glitch developed. Part of my FollowFriday page ceased to be active. I thought it was the site. Today, I discovered that on FireFox the page was working fully. Anyway, here is the additional data that will help you play #FollowFriday better. To view the page click here http://www.followfriday. com/followfriday/Poet_Carl_Watts. Go the page with your name listed. Just search for your Twitter name or look at more detailed instruction below. There is a button below the list of those that recommended you. It allows you to create a list of your supporters: CREATE LIST. I haven't figured it out yet but some people are somehow alerted they've been added to list. (Honestly, I've never figured out list at all. Probably my next project at some point! :-) The point is, create the list on you FollowFriday page! Next tiCREATE LIST button, is a THANK FFs button. This one I do understand well. After the game is over, use this button to thank the people that mentioned you! Then on Thursday, revisit your FollowFriday page. Use the THANK FFs button to remind people to play FollowFriday tomorrow! Notice the follower is red, they got disqualified. See my comments below on how to avoid as best as I can figure out. My suggestions here are only my opinions based on what I have found works. Update 04/11/12 How To Increase Your Results There have been a few times that I didn't CREATE LIST or sent THANK FFs. Both of these are mentioned in the above. The results 30-40% drop in activity and scoring. I recomend that you use these buttons and do create a list and do send out messages between 1-4 hours before the game starts. In my "Thank You" I alway use #FF. Good luck with the game :-) No one loses those some just don't play. How I Play. followers to recommend them all. Twitter does not allow that many Tweets to be posted. I suggest you make a list on a word document. Then on Fridays, you can just copy, paste and Tweet. I keep a list of all my followers that have RT'd my contents or spoken highly of me in the past. I try to give back to them. So if you're on my list thank you for your past support. There is software that you can use to send these #FF and other Tweets out for you automatically. You just load and tell it to start. That is TweetAdder. I am an affiliate for them. I've been using their product for about two years and I'm totally happy with it. You can read about it on my Advanced Twitter Tips page by clicking here. Update 7/22/11: In a communication with TweetAdder:
"1) Sending the exact same tweets out over and over again 2) Sending the same tweets across multiple profiles 3) High ratio of new follows blocking your profile > sending a flag to twitter" "#1 and #2 are easy fixes, don't repeat posts, or duplicate tweets. #3 Do not try to take a "shotgun" blast approach to following people...." and the randomizing the tweeting of them. Here is a sample:
@LionessOfJudeah 11Activism-vs-Sheeple http://ad.vu/uxzp #FF #AwesomeTeam @JeffCavallaro @SophieGramme @DnielAlper @didier52 94Activism-vs-Sheeple http://ad.vu/uxzp #FF #AwesomeTeam @foreverhear @PAULATRUMP @aliceDewonder @Vaccin8tionNews 62Activism-vs-Sheeple http://ad.vu/uxzp #FF #AwesomeTeam @CHARLATAN_INK @tami282 @febribiebier @GoGreenBeans 13Activism-vs-Sheeple http://ad.vu/uxzp #FF #AwesomeTeam @dara317 @Ivengarkissa @HairbyFayeMac @ranee25 60Activism-vs-Sheeple http://ad.vu/uxzp #FF #AwesomeTeam @psychbot @bev_carr @2BirdTalk @MaMaMichellina chances. If you are new to Twitter and want to expand, just take all your followers and do a shoutouts to them. Go to the list of your followers, copy & paste their names with some message like “Thx4Following #FF :-)”. Put as many or as few names in each tweet as you would like. Copy, paste and tweet goes really fast. To make this a bit easier, there is a free software program you can download to take keys and automate phrases. My "F1" key automatically enters “#AwesomeTeam Day2U!:-)” which I use all day long. I've programed about 10 keys. It doesn't take ANY computer skills to use this software. It is easy to change. I change the “Day” to “Nite” and back daily. That software is Clavier+. Their website is http://utilfr42.free.fr/util/Clavier.php?sLang=en I am not a affiliate with these great people! If you do random shoutouts, to all that are following you, your followers, the ones you mention, will notice you a lot more. Just the mention, by you, of them creates reality that you are there. They will pay more attention to your tweets. The game starts at 1200 midnight Thursday GMT. East Coast that 7:00 pm Thursday EST. For California, the game starts 4:00 pm PST. The game ends 1200 noon Saturday GMT according to the rules. Based on my observation, I could be wrong on this, I believe it ends 4:00 am PST. Anyone figures this out differently, give me a shout and I'll change. So on Thursday or what ever day and time it is where you live, have your list read and start promptly! I would recommend no more than a shoutout every 2-3 minutes. More often and you wind up in Twitter Jail and you lose time. If you run out of names, mix them up in a systematic fashion and do another round of shoutouts. Or you can just select new people, follow them and do shoutouts! Pick my followers they would appreciate the additional shoutout from you. Go to my profile and click on my followers and have fun! :-) The reason to start early is not everyone stay current on replying or even in looking at Twitter. I try to follow all mentioned to me in Shoutouts all the time so send me new people! I say "try" because it is impossible literally for me to keep up, but I work on it. I like your recommendations! They are great people! 7/29/11 Update: I just found out that on #FF's page, there are two columns: "Recommended by" and "Recommends." I recommend many people every week but I wasn't showing up. Today, I recommended someone from his FollowFriday page: http://www.followfriday.com/followfriday/iowa_card. My recommendation showed up under "Recommends". I don't know if that effects the weight of the #FF but I thought it interesting enough to mention. However, a week later still says I've recommended no people. I don't yet understand. I sent in Feedback questioning this and received no reply! It is the replies (shoutouts) with #FF or #FollowFriday that add up points in your favor and increases your ranking. Also going directly to a person's FollowFriday page and recommending them counts! (Don't do too many.) What marking count and what does not: "FF" does not count. "#Follow" does not count. "FF#" does not count. Use "#FF" or "#FollowFriday." Any symbols that separate the hashmarked word makes it not count for the game. Also if you do not leave a space before the hashmark, it will not count. For example "happy#FF" will not count but "happy #FF" counts. Each Friday, you play, based on my playing, you will get higher scores as your followers will join in and support you! People love to play games even if only to help you! When you play next week, change your opening phrase. For example “#FF Recommendations #AwesomeTeam” this week. Next week, I change that to “#AwesomeTeam Ppl to #FF”. This prevents duplicate posting which Twitter may block. See Twitter Rules by clicking here. Also see update 7/22/11 above. RT's do not count. If you want to help someone in the game, you have to do a shoutout, hitting the RT button doesn't work. (It maybe that manually copying and pasting does but I can't say that is true either way. If you're manually copying and pasting, leave off the RT and use some other way to communicate you're using someone else's tweet. If it is mine, I don't care!) The Rules say that “Thank You #FF” tweets do not count. There are many ways of saying "Thank You," without using those specific words. I don't know how smart their detection software is. "Thx", "TYRT" or "TY" may or may not be detected. Don't use "#FF" all week long as a general rule. They will not count your Friday efforts and only the first one of the week so that will limit your ability to create an impact on FollowFriday. See the Rules. The Rules say if you #FF more than 50 times you will be disqualified. I asked for a clarification of this. No reply. See the Rules. I looked at some of the people that had gotten disqualified. One person had used #FF for the same person 35 times in just a few hours. The full story is he doesn't play #FF but uses it to get attention. It works. Another follower, told me he counted his #FF solo shoutouts and got disqualified at 45 (5 short of 50) so use them sparingly. See more comments below! Another said she had only done about a dozen #FF and was disqualified. She wrote them and no reply was received. In March, 2011 just before I wrote this on Friday I mentioned well over 1300 people in over 4-600 tweets. There were many people that got mentioned more than once, even several times, as I do try to acknowledge those that mention me. I don't just keep doing many #FF to the same person over and over intentionally! It is my opinion that as long as you are mentioning several people in each shoutout, you will not be disqualified. That doesn't mean mention the same people in a different order many times. I'm not trying to get around the rules. But I do want you and me to play for the maximum results if you're willing to invest the time to play. I don't do a lot of solo shoutouts as I don't want to get disqualified. The rules are not clear to me. If I am doing #FF shoutouts to you and you don't wish to be receiving them, let me know and I'll remove you from my list. I observed one young lady, who has far fewer followers than I do, and she does hugely better in the rankings. I did a little observation. What I could see that was different was her followers were not getting disqualified. Last week about 25% of those playing the game got disqualified. Her followers are educated on how to play is all I can figure out. Hence, my article here on how to play and not get disqualified, I hope! If you don't want to play the game, it is work to do so, but want to support #AwesomeTeam do one or two Solo mentions with #FF and @Poet_Carl_Watts. Your support would be and is appreciated! In the past, it is entirely possible that your disqualification was wrong, an error. To be on the SAFE side, keep count of the solo #FF you do. I use a simple marks on a paper to tally how many solos I do. If you want to help #AwesomeTeam, mention me in a solo or duo shoutout. Also reTweet my content and shout outs. Everybody win! If you're helping many, don't do a solo for me, keep it to duos or more. A solo is 150 points, a duo is 75 to each point, 5 people mentions and we each get 25 points. But do not over promote me or anyone else and yourself disqualified as then none of your shoutouts count for anyone. They disqualify people for about a month roughly based on my observation. So if you have been disqualified, be patient, you can get back in the game. If you want to see last week ranking for your self, use this URL, but taking out my name and entering your: http://www.followfriday.com/followfriday/Poet_Carl_Watts If the game is in progress, they will give you this weeks estimated ranking for the moment. That will probably change as the game continues. It is a game. I can not lose as my support of each of you helps you win! If you have questions, ask. @Poet_Carl_Watts on Twitter or click here. Your support is needed and wanted and is appreciated. It is you that is the “AWESOME” in AwesomeTeam! Thanks for following and for allowing me to follow you. I do believe every thing will be alright. I believe we are working in that direction and we are making impacts! Please follow @MaryHWatts as a back up to my account! If you have found this helpful, don't be shy, hit the donate button. #AwesomeTeam Day2U!:-) Carl Man survives best when man is helping man survive! A person is only as valuable as he helps or assist others! Need some help in life without being told what to do, what to think, contact me. Have a great day! Carl Copyright 3/25/2011 CarlWattsArtist.com/Carl Watts edited 5/21/11, 7/22/11, 7/29/11, 8/7/11, 4/11/12 |
#FollowFriday, How to Play
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