Social Media Etiquette Do's and Don’ts
As a business owner or business professional, it is important to make sure that when you’re online you’re also building relationships and gaining credibility for your business and yourself.
Here are a few do’s and don’ts to make sure that you’re following the proper Social Media Etiquette.
Appearance:
- Do - be aware of your friend requests. If people aren’t accepting your friend requests it may have something to do with your photo. People might not accept you as a friend if you profile picture is of your new puppy, seven-year-old daughter, or Marge Simpson.
- Do - make sure you’re using a current picture of yourself. You can use an older picture, but when you finally decide to take your online relationship off line, that face-to-face meeting is going to be a little surprising.
- Don’t - make your logo your profile photo/avatar. Unless you’re a business, your social media default photo shouldn’t be a logo. You can include your logo, but make sure your face is in there somewhere.
- Don't - use a bad picture. With today’s technology it is so easy to take a good, hi-res photo of yourself. So why would you use the blurry, red-eye photos from last weekend’s barbeque?
Content:
- Do – Tweet as often as you want, but don’t get upset when someone unfollows you. People tend to unfollow “loud” tweeters.
- Do - Give credit where credit is due. If you’re taking a link or post from someone else, make sure you give the person who posted it credit!
- Don’t – Post on your blog less than every other day. A blog is a big commitment, if you can’t commit to at least two blogs a week, you should rethink it. You can get away with a blog a week, but chances are you won’t get much traction.
- Don’t – Post on Facebook more than five times a day. People don’t want to see you all over their news feed.
Conversations:
- Do – share your friends/followers links, events, and products. Sharing is caring! (within reason, of course).
- Do – Listen to those who comment and respond to what they say. Try and be the #1 commenter (or at least in the top 5) on your blog, or other social network. But be careful, you don’t have to respond to every single comment, you can combine your responses into one comment.
- Do – Link back to the sites of the people or products you are talking about. Doing this increases SEO for your website, the product or individual’s website and helps establish credibility. Plus it’s a nice way to show those you’re promoting that you care if your audience sees their product.
- Don’t - Promote yourself more than providing useful information. At HJMT we try and use the 5:1 rule. Five posts with useful information such as an article, a guest blog or something to generate conversation and one post promoting an upcoming event or product.
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