Netiquette is not just for email. It essentially transcends all electronic communication and interaction. There are many core principals that all means of connecting via the Internet have in common. There are also differences because of the very nature of any singular social media platforms.
Below is a wonderful article which speaks to several of these more popular platforms.
Enjoy and good Netiquette to all!
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By Kevan Lee March 2, 2015 blog.bufferapp.com
How did you end up learning the unwritten rules for social
media etiquette?
For me, it was a lot of watching and waiting, a bit of experimenting,
and tons of trial and error. When I first
started out on social media, I had just the most basic rules
and intuitions. Even now, I feel like I learn a new quirk or quibble on a
near-daily basis.
It’s hard to know which rules exist, which ones are real,
and which ones are okay to break or follow.
I’d love to help shed some light here so that you can go
forth and share confidently.
The 29 most common social media
rules
After digging into a bunch of research from thought leaders
and influencers, I found there seemed to be a set of social media rules
that most could agree on. Here’s the list of 29 social media rules
most commonly mentioned by the pros.
(Thanks to HubSpot, TollFreeForwarding
and Gryffin, Rebekah Radice [1]
[2],
Chris Brogan, and Outbound
Engine for their great resources and inspiration on these
social media rules.)
For all social networks
1. Share several times a day, but space out your posts
every few hours.
2. Respond to all comments as quickly as you can.
3. Know the art of the hashtag. 1 hashtag is fine. 10
hashtags are not.
4. Always keep the 80/20 rule! Entertain and inform your
audience first, sell to them second.
5. Use first person plural when talking about your company
brand (We, Us).
For Twitter
6. Don’t automatically direct message people that follow
you.
7. Don’t use all 140 characters. Give people room to retweet
with a reply.
8. Don’t hijack another company’s hashtag.
9. Don’t buy followers.
10. Don’t stuff your tweets with keywords.
For Facebook
11. Don’t Like your own post.
12. Don’t post or tag photos of fans, customers, or
employees without permission.
13. Don’t tag people or pages that aren’t relevant to your
post.
14. Don’t ask for Likes, Comments, or Shares.
LinkedIn
15. Personalize your connection requests. Tell them WHY
you’re connecting.
16. Once connected, send a “welcome” message.
17. Don’t join groups and immediately start selling yourself.
18. Don’t ignore the more professional tone of the network.
Google+
19. Always +mention users when commenting on their posts.
20. When sharing a post, always add your own commentary to
it first.
21. Share to Circles to target your content.
22. Use Google+ formatting for your text—bold, italics, and
strikethrough.
Pinterest
23. Don’t neglect to provide good descriptions for your
pins.
24. Always link back to the original source and give credit.
25. Don’t use images that have nothing to do with your clickthrough
content to get more pins or clicks.
26. Don’t pin just your own material.
Instagram
27. Don’t ask people to follow you or use hashtags like
#tagsforlikes – it’s unprofessional.
28. Don’t overgram. No one likes their feed filled up with
one user.
29. Use hashtags for your brand appropriately. The golden
number of hashtags is 11.
Rules for all social networks
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Share several times a day, but
space out your posts every few hours.
Research has shown that bursts—moments when you flood your
followers’ timelines with several updates sent back-to-back-to-back—are one of the
most significant factors in unfollowing. To combat this, you can use
a social media scheduling tool like Buffer
to space out your posts.
Respond to all comments as quickly
as you can
A social
media study found that 53 percent of users who tweet at a brand
expect a response in under 60 minutes. Twitter is the most real-time of the
social networks. Timely responses are imperative on Twitter and highly
encouraged everywhere else.
Know the art of the hashtag. 1
hashtag is fine. 10 hashtags are not.
How many hashtags is too many? The Next Web
recommends 1-3 hashtags per post, across all platforms. It’s a
good rule of thumb to start with; you might find your mileage varies depending
on the different networks.
From what we’ve been able to research and
learn about hashtags,
· Twitter
– 2 hashtags seems to be best
· Facebook
– hashtags may actually decrease engagement
· Instagram
– 11 or more hashtags per post gets the most engagement
· Pinterest
– hashtags are not recommended
The takeaway here: Hashtags are great for added engagement
and visibility, almost all the time. The ideal number of hashtags seems to vary
greatly. Feel free to test and iterate for yourself.
Always keep the 80/20 rule!
Entertain and inform your audience first, sell to them second
We’ve covered the many different ratios you
might try for your social media sharing—the 4-1-1 rule, the Rule of
Thirds, the Golden Ratio, etc.—and one thing they all have in common is an
emphasis on sharing others’ content more than your own.
For many, this will be a great strategy. For our social
media sharing at Buffer, we’ve tried the opposite advice,
sharing 90 percent of our own content and 10 percent from others. We’ve yet to
see a negative impact on engagement.
Use first person plural when talking
about your company brand (We, Us)
For example:
When speaking as the company, first-person plural is best.
When speaking as your personal brand, first-person singular (I, me) would
be more natural.
Social media rules for Twitter
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Don’t automatically direct message
people that follow you.
There’s a time and a place for good social media
automation, and direct-messaging new followers doesn’t appear to be
it. A popular practice in the earlier days of Twitter, auto-DMs now are easily
identified by users as inauthentic messaging.
Don’t use all 140 characters. Give
people room to retweet with a reply.
The ideal
length of a tweet is 71 to 100 characters, exactly for this reason.
If a person chooses to manually retweet you (copying the text from your tweet
and typing RT: at the beginning), they may want to add a personal note or message
to your original tweet. Keeping the length below the 140-character limit makes
this easier.
Don’t hijack another company’s
hashtag.
HubSpot has
some great advice for this one:
When you see companies create
well-performing hashtags, don’t hop on their hashtag train to promote
irrelevant content — it devalues their hashtag and, as a result, your brand.
Don’t buy followers.
Betaworks data scientist Gilad Lotan ran an
experiment on this exact rule, paying $5 for 4,000 Twitter
followers. He found that doing so felt quite off—sleazy even. Still, the
final outcome for the experiment actually led to positive Twitter growth for
Gilad.
I do believe that acquiring just the
right amount, as much as I hate to write it, may have a positive long-term
effect on acceleration of growth and visibility.
This would make for an interesting ethics debate,
right? Just because a strategy works on social media, does that mean it’s
okay to use? How do social media rules and etiquette factor in? Buying
twitter followers feels a bit underhanded and unethical to me. I’d love to
hear your thoughts!
Don’t stuff your tweets with
keywords.
How would your tweet sound if you were to say it
face-to-face to a friend or coworker? This seems to be a good measure of the
right balance of keywords.
Social media rules for Facebook
Don’t Like your own post.
Liking your own post has the potential to surface the
content again in the News Feed (first when you publish, and again when you
Like) and to kick off engagement from others. That being said, doing so tends
to send a rather desperate, unsavory message to those who catch on.
Don’t post or tag photos of fans,
customers, or employees without permission.
Many sites recommend getting written permission before going
ahead with posting and tagging photos of others on your Facebook page. There’s
likely to be very valid privacy concerns that could arise if brands aren’t
careful in this area.
Don’t tag people or pages that
aren’t relevant to your post.
People and pages who are tagged in Facebook updates receive
notification of being mentioned; some folks use this as a simple hack for
getting added attention on the content they publish. Again, this is one of
those tactics that might work well yet doesn’t feel particularly great.
Don’t ask for Likes, Comments, or
Shares.
Previously, the social media rule for this one was: Only ask
people to like your status if you are doing a poll, i.e. “Like this post if
you’re a dog person, share it if you’re a cat lover.” Asking for likes,
comments, or shares is one of the factors that the Facebook
News Feed considers when it decides what content to show.
Promotional text like this lowers the visibility of your content.
Social media rules for LinkedIn
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Personalize your connection
requests. Tell them WHY you’re connecting.
Personal requests tend to be noticed and appreciated—and
accepted!—moreso than a simple generic request.
Once connected, send a “welcome”
message.
In my experience, this one happens quite rarely—although the
effect can be great! If you get a lot of LinkedIn requests, this might not
scale too well; however, it’s possible to do this for a few connections at a
time or for the occasions when you connect with influencers.
Don’t join groups and immediately
start selling yourself.
Groups are a great way to connect with others in LinkedIn
(one of the benefits of Groups is that you can direct message any fellow group
member, whether you’re connected or not). One of the best rules for LinkedIn
groups is to respect the group dynamics. Share and engage before selling.
Don’t ignore the more professional
tone of the network.
This one speaks to an even greater social media rule: Tailor
your content and message for each specific network. LinkedIn in particular has
a targeted demographic of business people and professionals. Content on
the network does best when it fits that tone.
Social media rules for Google+
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Always +mention users when
commenting on their posts.
This helps the original authors follow along with the
thread, and it’s a polite way to give attribution and credit where it’s due.
When sharing a post, always add your
own commentary to it first.
Google+ posts are a real joy to read and write; they’re
often more like mini blog posts than social media updates. The way that users
compose these messages has a really neat art and science to it. One way I’ve
noticed is that many people add their own thoughts about a topic first,
followed by a horizontal line break (a series of connected dashes, usually),
then the headline and link to the related article.
Share to Circles to target your
content.
Sharing to a Circle is like Direct Messaging a particular
group of people. Only those in the Circle will receive the notification and can
view the content. It’s a useful way to share targeted content with a
compartmentalized group of followers.
Social media rules
for Pinterest
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Don’t neglect to provide good
descriptions for your pins.
Sometimes, in quickly pinning different images it’s
easy to leave out the pin description. This is one of the key ways that new
users can discover your pins, provided you compose a good description that’s
rich in keywords.
Always link back to the original
source and give credit.
Whenever we talk about images on the
Buffer blog, one of the key areas to keep in mind is proper
attribution. Images tend to get passed around lots online, so it’s always best
to track back to the original source so that they get credit for their
creation.
Pinning from the original source, rather than somewhere that
syndicated or republished the image, is always best.
Don’t use images that have nothing
to do with your clickthrough content to get more pins or clicks.
This Pinterest hack may bring in clicks, but they’re not
likely to be valuable, sticky traffic nor are the new visitors to leave
with a very good impression of their experience.
Don’t pin just your own material.
Instead, you can create individual boards that
highlight your blog posts or content. Beyond that, pin from a wide variety
of sources.
Here’s an example of what we’ve done for our marketing
tips posts from the Buffer blog.
Social media rules
for Instagram
Which Ones Are Real? Which Ones Are
Breakable?
Don’t ask people to follow you or
use hashtags like #tagsforlikes.
Similar to to Facebook, asking for Likes is not recommended,
although instead of impacting your photo’s visibility (there’s no News Feed
algorithm for Instagram), the impact is likely to be felt on your brand’s
professionalism.
Don’t overgram. No one likes their
feed filled up with one user.
In our research into ideal
frequency for social media, Instagram was one that didn’t have as
concrete of a standard. One research study found that major brands post an
average of 1 to 2 times per day. At the same time, brands that post 10
or more times per day continued to see positive engagement growth even as
frequency grew.
Use hashtags for your brand
appropriately. The golden number of hashtags is 11.
As mentioned above, you can often get away with more
hashtags on Instagram than any other social network. Track Maven’s study of
Instagram hashtags found that interactions were at the highest on images when
11 or more hashtags were used.
The best part about this recommendation is that the data
comes from a set of users with 1,000 or fewer followers—a group that
likely includes small businesses and those just diving in to Instagram. In
other words, hashtags could be your best bet for growing a fast following on
Instagram.
Summary
Which of social media’s unwritten rules have you learned of
in your experience? Which ones do you subscribe to? Which ones do you break?
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In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:
www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki
If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications.
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