5 Social Networking Faux Pas to Avoid

When it comes to social networking nothing is written in stone so you need to use your common sense. Below I have outlined some of the more common faux-pas of Social Networking. Stick to the Netiquette and avoid the following and you won’t go far wrong.

• Shoving your business down other people’s throats is utterly tasteless and frankly – spammy. There is only one place for Spam and it is in a fritter (and even those have gone out of fashion). If you were invited to a dinner party, would you walk in and hand out your business card before you’d even been introduced? We don’t do it offline, so why oh why do people insist on doing it online? Do you honestly think that by writing all over my blog or profile page about the ‘amazing opportunity your business will bring me’ gives me any inclination what-so-ever to investigate it further? It doesn’t!

Perhaps if you’d introduced yourself first, I may be more inclined…..may!

• Joining too many groups or forums! Don’t do it, you’ll never have time to maintain them all so just frequent the ones that you find the most beneficial. If you join too many, you’ll be wasting valuable time that you could be ploughing into your business. Don’t get me wrong – social networking can be an integral part of your businesses success but too much can be detrimental – find a balance.
• Going into a social networking site and sucking up all of the great info without so much as a ‘Thank You’ or a ‘How Do You Do’ – it’s just rude! If I invited you round for a cuppa, would you come in – drink the tea, eat all my biscuits and then go without a word? Well, you might – but you’d never get another Oreo from me! You are there to add value, learn from others and make contacts for potential JV partnerships. Leaving thanks for something you have found beneficial will also earn you kudos – it’s a win/win situation.
• Underestimating your profile page – that is where you write about your business in a professional and genuine way. This is where people go, voluntarily, to find out more information about you and what you do. They’ve seen you adding value in the forums or around the site and their interest is piqued – they want to know more. It is far more powerful for them to click through to your page and then to your site than have you ram it down their throats.
• Getting into to ridiculous heated debates – I’ve seen this happen many times. So before you react to anything that you have read, make sure you have all of your facts straight or you could end up looking like a fool. There is nothing wrong with healthy debate, far from it – but an online argument is not something you wish to ruin your reputation with. Talk travels fast and it travels at warp speed online!

And as a bonus – here’s my final tip, learn the lingo! Not all sites run the same way and it’s common courtesy to suss out some of the rules before you go tramping in there in your size 9’s. Take Twitter for example – your first day on there is going to leave your head spinning – by the end of the week after some initial observation, you’ll be tweeting and retweeting (now cut to RT) with the rest of the @Twitterers.

Now go forth and socialise!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.