{"id":3570,"date":"2011-02-24T23:55:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T06:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=3570"},"modified":"2011-02-24T23:55:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T06:55:08","slug":"an-insider-s-guide-to-social-media-etiquette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/24\/an-insider-s-guide-to-social-media-etiquette\/","title":{"rendered":"AN INSIDER\u2019S GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisbrogan.com\/socialmediaetiquette\/\" target=\"_blank\">chrisbrogan<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/takomabibelot\/496644479\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_MsZb8mYFoCs\/TWdRZ1F8XzI\/AAAAAAAANL0\/gBliz4M--Oc\/s800\/496644479_656da909c5.jpg\" alt=\"Cocktail Party At The Imperial Hotel\" width=\"500\" height=\"352\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I receive a lot of questions about various points of etiquette with regards to social media. I also observe instances where I wish people knew some of the more common etiquette, because they seem like wonderful people, who maybe have made a mistake because they didn\u2019t know better. To that end, I thought I\u2019d give a brief set of ideas around social media etiquette. You\u2019re very welcome to add to these in the comments. There will be a mix of do\u2019s and don\u2019ts, and remember this above all else: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisbrogan.com\/youre-doing-it-wrong\/\">you\u2019re doing it wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: YOUR APPEARANCE<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Your avatar picture shouldn\u2019t be a logo. We don\u2019t meet logos at parties, do we? You can<em>include<\/em> a logo, but make it you.<\/li>\n<li>Unless you\u2019re a fictional character, more often than not, your avatar should be you. Amazing Simpson-like renditions of you are interesting for about four hours.<\/li>\n<li>Your Facebook profile pic can be not you, but it often means that others might not accept your friend request. It feels creepy friending a four year old kid (avatar).<\/li>\n<li>Your picture <em>can<\/em> be you from 10 or 15 years ago, but that first face to face meeting is going to be jarring.<\/li>\n<li>It doesn\u2019t take a <em>lot<\/em> of work to take a decent pic. Why use those \u201cme cut out from posing with someone while I have red eyes\u201d photos?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: FRIENDING<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>You\u2019re not obligated to follow\/friend anyone. No matter what. Not even your mother. (I follow my <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/dianebrogan\">mother<\/a>, btw).<\/li>\n<li>If you decide to unfollow someone, don\u2019t make a big stink and announce why. Just leave.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s okay to let the competition follow you. It\u2019s okay to follow the competition.<\/li>\n<li>Famous people don\u2019t always want to follow back. I\u2019m looking at you, Justin Bieber!<\/li>\n<li>You can set your own rules on Facebook. I\u2019m in the process of moving everyone to a fan page and just keeping VERY close family and friends.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: CONVERSATION<\/h5>\n<li>Commenting about other people\u2019s stuff and promoting other people\u2019s stuff is very nice.<\/li>\n<li>Retweeting people\u2019s praise of you comes off as jerky. Just thank them.<\/li>\n<li>If you retweet something interesting, <strong>always<\/strong> give credit for who found it first.<\/li>\n<li>Facebook wall comment streams can get long. Don\u2019t grumble. If you\u2019re along for the ride, it\u2019ll end some day.<\/li>\n<li>Promote others more often than you promote yourself. My long-standing measure is 12:1. (If it doesn\u2019t work at first, it\u2019s because maybe you\u2019re not sincere in your promoting of others).<\/li>\n<li>Listening is important and commenting is important. Be the #1 commenter on your blog. (See next one)<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s okay to NOT comment back for every single comment you receive. It\u2019s nice when you can respond, but don\u2019t litter the comments with a bunch of \u201cThanks, Judy.\u201d People know you care, if you\u2019re doing it right.<\/li>\n<li>If you are talking about someone in a blog post, link to them. <a href=\"http:\/\/stevegarfield.com\/\">Steve Garfield<\/a> is a pro at this.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re <em>really<\/em> nice, you\u2019ll think about link text and help them even more by linking to <a href=\"http:\/\/stevegarfield.com\/\">Internet video expert<\/a> Steve Garfield. Make sense?<\/li>\n<li>Links <em>do<\/em> matter to Google and to the people you care about. When you can, give them a link.<br \/>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: DISCLOSURE<\/h5>\n<p><em>(Note: I\u2019ve written about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisbrogan.com\/disclosure-always\/\">disclosure<\/a> before).<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you\u2019re writing about a client, add (client) to the tweet\/post\/update.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re selling me something with an affiliate link, disclose that in the tweet\/post\/update.<\/li>\n<li>If there\u2019s a material reason (or perception of such) that you want me to take an action or click a link, tell me.<\/li>\n<li>Tell me once in the post, and once again on a disclosure page. I use part of my <a href=\"http:\/\/chrisbrogan.com\/about\">about page<\/a>for disclosures. See also: one of my other favorite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christopherspenn.com\/disclosures\/\">disclosure page<\/a>s (for cheekiness).<\/li>\n<li>Make sure your audience comfortably knows your motives, and everything goes better.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: PROMOTING<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Promote as if you\u2019re at a cocktail party. It\u2019s not the same as your email blast list.<\/li>\n<li>Promote others, and it\u2019s much more likely people will help promote you when it\u2019s your turn.<\/li>\n<li>Leave room for retweets. Writing 139 characters won\u2019t get you anywhere.<\/li>\n<li>Promoting on Facebook is MUCH nicer on my wall than in my private messages. (Do you agree?)<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s probably okay to promote something 4x a day on a social network, so that you hit all the time zones appropriately. In the last hour, you can always give it a couple more pushes, but that\u2019s about it.<\/li>\n<li>Direct messaging people for promotion help is often annoying. It happens much more than you know.<\/li>\n<li>Your cause isn\u2019t always our cause. If we don\u2019t want to help, don\u2019t badger.<\/li>\n<li>Things where you have to get 1,000 tweets to raise money are litter on Twitter. Things to get 1,000 \u201clikes\u201d on Facebook are fine. (Remember, however, that a \u201clike\u201d gives your demographic data to the thing that you\u2019ve liked, plus permission for that page to message you privately.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: CONTENT PRODUCTION<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>You can post as often as you want on your blog. It\u2019s your blog. Monthly will probably fade from our memory. Weekly could work. Daily is my favorite. Some people post many times a day. It\u2019s up to you.<\/li>\n<li>You can tweet as often as you want, but people unfollow \u201cnoisy\u201d tweeters (I get unfollowed often).<\/li>\n<li>You can update Facebook often, and if you\u2019re running pages, you might want to update 3-4 times a day, I\u2019m starting to observe.<\/li>\n<li>Depending on your blog\u2019s purpose, be wary of over-selling. (I ran into this personally.) Make sure you\u2019re still providing great community value.<\/li>\n<li>If you find great content from other places, use it only after you understand whether you have <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/\">permission to do so<\/a>, and under the terms that the people have set.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re linking and sharing someone else\u2019s blog post (which is good to do), it\u2019s also wonderful when you add something to it. Add some commentary. Add a thought or two as to why it matters to your community.<\/li>\n<li>If someone\u2019s work inspires your own post, it\u2019s a nice thing to \u201chat tip\u201d them with a link to the post that inspired you, somewhere in the post (usually down at the bottom).<\/li>\n<li>If you go a long time between blog updates, don\u2019t write a \u201csorry I haven\u2019t written lately\u201d post. No one cares. Just publish something good.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE: SHARING IS CARING<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<li>Every blog I know has a share\/like\/tweet\/stumble button at the bottom or somewhere. They\u2019re there for a reason. If you like the article, pushing those buttons is a \u201ctip jar\u201d for the artist. Push it. It doesn\u2019t take long.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re reading in Google Reader, sharing is as simple as \u201c[SHIFT] S\u201d and that goes to everyone who reads your shared items.<\/li>\n<li>Tell the blogger when you love something they\u2019ve done. People\u2019s #1 complaint to me when they\u2019re starting out blogging is that they lack any feedback. It\u2019d take you 30 seconds to do, and would change a person\u2019s perspective for a whole day.<\/li>\n<li>Comments in Twitter are temporary moments in a stream. Comments on the blog post itself are forever, in the best (and worst) of ways.<\/li>\n<li>The web thrives on links and social sharing. The more YOU do to participate, the more people will create material for free for you to enjoy.<br \/>\n<h5>YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY<\/h5>\n<p>For every idea above, there\u2019s an exception. For every idea above, there\u2019s a great reason to do the opposite. If you\u2019re doing it differently than above, you\u2019re not wrong. You\u2019re doing it your way. Okay, I lied: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisbrogan.com\/youre-doing-it-wrong\/\">you\u2019re doing it wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to your thoughts, disagreements, counter-posts, additional thoughts, sharing, and more.<\/li>\n<h3>Bonus: If you&#8217;re Forever Alone&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/_MsZb8mYFoCs\/TWdRa9Oe_gI\/AAAAAAAANL4\/RPY54K5TpqY\/s800\/kBI0Q.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by chrisbrogan I receive a lot of questions about various points of etiquette with regards to social media. I also observe instances where I wish people knew some of the more common etiquette, because they seem like wonderful people, who maybe have made a mistake because they didn\u2019t know better. To that end, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3572,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions\/3572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}