Do you get the most out of #FollowFriday?

I attended a networking meeting this week where we were all talking about social media and how we use it for our businesses. This is a matter very close to my heart, I use it, I love it and I get work from it.

One of the things that my table started to discuss was #FollowFriday, and this is where my rant starts. It's a fantastic idea, recommend people and companies who have helped you over the past week. So why do so many people just list a whole load of other people/businesses? One of the reasons was - that's the way that everyone else does it, is there another way to do this? Often the people who list a whole load of companies one after the other are just listing their twitter friends, wanting to promote them. We as the viewer have no idea why they are being recommended or if it worth us following them.

The best way of promoting a friend or company that you have received a great service from is to tell all your twitter followers why they should follow them too.

The advice I gave to my table was, if you are going to #ff a company, do it one company at a time and make sure that you give a reason on why you are recommending them, this way others reading your tweet can make an informed decision about wether they should follow them or not.

Personally, I always skim over the lists of #ff as they are informative and hold no value to me - do you feel the same?