So…. How’s Your Social Media Etiquette?

Social Media Etiquette, a lot of people don’t quite understand what they should and shouldn’t be sharing. I’m all up for sharing about your lives and what you’re up to, but there is ways it should and shouldn’t be done.

Ignorance

Being ignorant on social media is one of the worst things you can do, it’s called social media for a reason. Many companies, when they get a tweet from anyone they completely blank it and this is NOT the way you should be treating your customers. It is pretty self explanatory, but a lot of people overlook it. They feel like because they have a fairly large following there’s no need for engagement, but there is always need for engagement. Have a chat, let your audience know that their voice will be heard too.

Don’t Air Dirty Laundry

Your private life is for your own private social media accounts, but even then it’s not acceptable all the time. Nobody wants to see or hear about yours or your colleagues grievances. Keep your arguments to yourself, keep upbeat and professional. There’s nothing worse than going onto somebody’s profile and seeing down posts or an argumentative employee.

Link Things Correctly

When putting links into your posts, keep them relevant and when you reshare old content that isn’t yours, make sure the link is not broken and works correctly. Not only is having a broken link pointless but it looks unprofessional, it looks like you don’t care about the content you share and you’re only doing it to get more of an audience.

Don’t Be A Spammer, Ever

Nobody likes spammers, so why do it? There’s no need to post constantly and annoy your users with useless content, just like there is no need to hijack somebody else’s post just to advertise yourself. The best way to advertise yourself on social media is to create conversations with anyone, yhat doesn’t mean search the hashtags and send people links to your website. This is the same for pictures of events. Nobody wants to see 600+ pictures of the same 3 hour event, pick out the best ones and only post them, and where possible, organize into an album. People won’t sit and click through lots of pictures but if they see there’s only a few, they are more likely to.

Don’t Pay For Followers

It might look great having 10,000 followers to you, but if people look through those followers (and a lot often will) they can see that they are clearly paid for followers. You don’t want just anybody to follow you, you want people in your target industry to see your posts. Building an organic audience through content and conversations is key here as you can connect with like-minded individuals.

Keywords, Keywords Everywhere!

I could easily spam this post with loads of keywords so people can find it easier on Google etc but what’s the point? People can tell when you are trying to game the system, and trust me, Google bots know too and will penalize you. Use keywords where appropriate. Even just using your industry’s terminology can get you a lot more views through search engines.

Don’t Force Yourself On People

Think of social media as going on a date… When you first meet someone and get to know someone you don’t force yourself onto them do you? If you do, well I’m pretty sure it only went to that first date. Don’t oversell and think of your audience as window shoppers, what would they like to see at first glance? Direct sales went out of the window a while ago, its more about pulling your audience in rather than pushing yourself at the audience. At least you know the people who are following you actually want to see your content.

People seem to forget that the internet is a public platform and any information can be spread around the world in seconds. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your family or boss to see. Even if your profile is private, people are still able to take screenshots and share them around. Be careful about what you post, and think to yourself whether you would be happy for it to go “viral”. If you’re not too sure, don’t post.

@KellyCulver96

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