Knowing who you should follow and getting recommendations and insights from the network of people you follow is important in making twitter more valuable to you and your business use of twitter.

Every Friday on Twitter there is a phenomenon called “Follow Friday”. Basically people will tweet who they recommend that people should follow. Think of it as a lightweight recommendation or endorsement activity engine. This will help you to find and follow the people that you want in your network of connections.

Here are 7 Best Practices to use when engaging in Follow Friday on Twitter.

1. Use the hash tag (the pound sign # = hash tag) and include this in the body of your tweet #followfriday

2. Recommend people who you think are worthy of following and that your network would benefit from following and connecting with them.

3. Break out your #followfriday tweets by some sort of category if possible. For example I might recommend people that are great analysts, engineers, foodies, artists, software developers, branding or marketing executives by specifically stating in my tweet why you should follow them.

4. Use Follow Friday to give back value to your followers network and reward the people that you respect and whose tweets you find valuable. Make sure you include the @ before the name so that people can easily click to that users profile page.

5. One of the keys of all social networks is that you have to give to get. So give and share the brain trust of people that you think are deserving of it. It will come back to you in the form of more loyal and engaged network!

6. Watch for your network to recommend people via Follow Friday and you can discover some real gems and make connections quickly. Pay special attention to the people that you respect.

7. Don’t blindly follow everyone that is recommended. Allocate a few minutes and check out the bio and tweets from the recommended people before you decide to follow those recommendations.

Here is a sample #followfriday tweet and an effective way to communicate who you are recommending and why.

Happy Following! FYI you can follow me at @Rumford

Twitter is announcing a new hand held device that appears to be like a full featured twitter interaction device. Word on the street is that the Twitter Wingman will be released in 3 months to the general public. Tentatively named the Twitter Wingman; it is roughly the size of a large page device, it has enhanced features such as:
** Ability to group people (big value there)
** Built in 5 Meg camera with a flash
** A $30 - 40 price tag with a two-year contract on Boost Mobile
** Integrated GPS with real time maps that allow you to locate other Wingmen in the area.
** Bluetooth data transfers between Wingmen.
** Dedicated hot keys for sending direct tweets, picking up new followers, and retweeting.

Check out more details in this great video from the team at WIRED.

While all of this could prove promising… I have to ask myself… “Do I really need to carry another device? Couldn’t we just build most of this functionality right into an iphone app?” This clearly does have a push to drive more acceptance on the low end based upon the price point. Let’s not forget that once you have a device like this it could become a very solid channel to drive geo specific & relevant advertising through.

Although this is an April fools joke. It is not too nutty to become something that just might work.

Pepsi has done what smart brands will be doing in the future. Get out of the way and let the experience happen. Anything that a brand can do that puts them in the middle of facilitation, connection, conversations and exposing people with similar interests can be a powerful brand and marketing experience.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible in creating a unique branded experience that leverages the Twitter API and content for companies. The possibilities are endless. Creative ideation needs to take place to ensure that a compelling experience can be created that aligns with a brands core values and customers. We have service offerings that will create compelling experiences for brands and companies. Consumer brands and the entertainment industry needs to pay close attention.

Contact me and we can help your brand in these types of branded endeavors.

See what Pepsi had to say about what they were doing in Social Media at SXSW.

I wanted to quickly give you some food for thought. The opportunities for large AND small businesses on Twitter are huge.  Watch what Scott Monty from FORD says about their experience on Twitter in this Fox Business segment. Notice he says they are not interested in advertising on social networks like Twitter; rather it is about connecting with their target demographic on social networks like Twitter. This is a trend that is here to stay: customers are EXPECTING for your company to be on Twitter and have you interact with them.

I asked Scott via Twitter for 1  benefit of Twitter for Ford. He Tweeted this response.

My favorite quote from the video clip. Scott: “It is less about a campaign and more about a commitment… It is an ongoing way of doing business that we are going to see…”

Some of the Ford Twitter Accounts: Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments.

FordTrucks

FordDriveOne

FordDriveGreen

FordCustService

FordMustang

FordRacing

Side Note: Even the anchors on Fox News are on Twitter. You can follow Fox News anchor Liz Claymen on Twitter.

Being that it is Superbowl Sunday you can expect that many people will be using Twitter as a communication channel as people share updates about the game, festivities and the Superbowl commercials. The NFL has a prime opportunity as this is the worlds largest televised sporting event watched around the world.

The NFL has a Twitter account as well as a Twitter Superbowl 43 account. You can see the updates that they are publishing on their Superbowl website. It would appear that they are simply publishing updates at a very infrequent rate. It is Superbowl Sunday morning as I write this and there has not been a post in over 12 hours,  which sort of misses the point and where they have an opportunity to create enhanced brand value.

They are trying to make the Twitter content on the event site more formalized. Which misses the point of immediacy and conversant tweets. I will say it is step in the right direction, but the execution misses a lot. They might be much better served to display on the website what all the FANS are saying about the game. This then acts as a true lens into the football audience and what they are doing, thinking and sharing. They could have taken an idea I had months ago; which is setting up a team of Superbowl Tweeters who could have been at the game and all the pregame festivities who could group twitter and share photos, videos and it would feel much more intimate. It is important to note that they have only 2390 followers on Twitter which means they have not promoted this channel at all. In fact it is pretty well hidden and only an edge person like myself tracked it down, and I had to hunt to find it.

Business advertisers are spending north of 3.5 million dollars per 30 second advertisement to reach the audience, create buzz, drive brand awareness and sales. As everyone gathers around the water cooler on Monday people will be discussing their favorite superbowl ads. Many of these ads actually will drive large amounts of online traffic as people go online and make the cross from broadcast television to online engagement. We will see some cross channel promotion as some of these advertisers have a presence on Twitter to continue the engagement and conversation after these Ad spots. You can follow the Twitter conversations regarding the Superbowl Ads at #superads09

I do know of one Superbowl advertiser that is doing something very interesting around Twitter: H&R Block. They have a very interesting Ad spot which features Murray the Tax preparer and they have extended the character and given him a presence on Twitter. You can follow Murray the Tax Guy on Twitter here.

I think the important ideas for brands to take away is that and H & R Block has done an excellent job with these areas for distribution, awareness, consumption and engagement. A few key points:

* Extend the Superbowl beyond a 30 second spot by integrating across all marketing channels. They will be incorporating across the  HRblock.com homepage, Youtube brand channel, Myspace brand channel and Facebook brand channel and all will be integrating the Superbowl spot after it airs today.

* Enable two-way dialog by being active on Twitter and having multiple brand channels open.  Murray is a character extension that will be a little fun to see how the rest of the story of the ad plays out.

* All of their channels are open for customer dialog; which is where they do an excellent job in execution and engagement.

This is my personal favorite Tweet from Murray thus far…