You’re invited to the #FFBWednesday party!

Have you ever been to a gathering or a party or a wedding where you don’t really know anyone and it’s clear that everyone else there have met before and know each other? Everyone is really friendly and they walk around, chat to one another about things they’ve got in common and put the world to rights.  You might try and join a conversation about something you have in common with them and thankfully there are usually one or two who might chat back to you but they’re soon off on their way back to their group.
This is my analogy of how edutwitter is for some people.  It’s like that party (and sometimes it really is like a party as it’s such an amazing thing to be involved in with so many amazing people) and even though you’ve been invited and are welcome to be there, it can feel like you’re not quite ‘in the room’.  You might have pressing questions, you might have great ideas, you might actually have so much that really is worth hearing but it’s like you’re on the outside looking in. You might pose a question, you might share a resource or you might make an amazing statement about how we can better the education of our children but it’s hard to be heard.
I’ve been lucky over the past year or so as I have become one of the ‘in the room’ people.  And it really was luck for me.  I shared a few resources, I got involved in conversations and I tweeted a few (fairly) humorous things that others found humorous too.  The one thing that really got me ‘in the room’ was my idea to try and get everyone connecting with one another at the edutwitter party and that’s when Follow/Follow Back Wednesday (#FFBWednesday) began. It was precisely because of my party analogy that I invented it and, once again, I got lucky.  I’m sure people have tried for years, and in different ways, to invent something similar to #FFBWednesday and perhaps it’s worked to an extent but didn’t quite take off, so I’m not claiming to have invented a brand new ‘thing’. It’s just that I was lucky and it ‘worked’!
I knew it was working because it began to grow and grow, week after week.  What started with 50 or so people on the thread now has nearly 800 every week which is amazing! Educators from all over the world take part! Mad! I even got awarded as ‘Wellbeing Ambassador’ by the Edufuturist team (thanks guys!) for it.
The whole point in #FFBWednesday is about ‘making connections’.  It’s a thread for people involved in education where they can connect and follow one another which then, hopefully, can lead to everyone growing their Personal Learning Network (PLN) which in turn gets people the support and help they might be needing from edutwitter.  Essentially it gets people ‘in the room’.
It has worked phenomenally well and it’s great to hear from people each week saying that they’ve made new connections or have managed to get an answer to a question that they’ve posed because of it.
Just recently, possibly because we are all staying in, I have connected with a batch of new edutweeters and I’ve seen a number of threads guiding people towards #FFBWednesday so I thought I would go through the ‘rules’ for anyone interested.

Every Wednesday morning (usually around 4:45am! I know!) I start the #FFBWednesday thread with a simple tweet and this is what happens next:

1) ‘Like’ the thread, retweet the thread and/or comment on the thread using the #FFBWednesday hashtag (I’ll be honest, the thread goes crazy and personally I’m much better at following back people who have commented as you can’t always see every single ‘like’ after a while, however ‘likes’ and retweets allow the thread to spread far and wide so do all 3 if you can!) 

2) When commenting, it helps if you give a little bio about your educational position even if it’s a simple ‘I’m a year 5/6 teach always looking to connect with other educators and get new ideas’ 

3) The whole point in this is for educators to connect with educators so it’s nice to know what you do (I’d also advise that you say what your educational position is in your own twitter bio too as it’s more likely that people will follow you if they have an idea of who you are and what you do) 

4) Now this is the key part and the whole reason why it works: Follow Back everyone who has done step 1) and 2). It doesn’t take much. Click the tweeter and press follow.  If everyone does this then your personal learning network will grow. 

Also, don’t sit and wait for people to follow you just because you’ve commented on the thread. Follow first is a phrase I often use. If you follow first you are more likely to be followed back. 

Basically, just follow, follow, follow! 

And that’s it! It’s very simple and just seems to work.  I’ll stop jabbering now and apologies for any typos! Lets get everyone ‘in the room’ at the Edutwitter party! Cheers!