Saturday, April 11, 2015

Netiquette Standards For Social Media - Via Netiquette IQ




 Must of my writing and many of my blogs focus on email. But Netiquette extends into all Internet communication. So from time to time, I post something from my book, my own thoughts or pertinent articles reflecting other forms of electronic communication, primarily social media. Below is a solid article to this point. Enjoy its content!

Good Netiquette to all!
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February 9, 2015 buzzfarmers.com By Shawn Badgley 0Share
If you’re going to use Twitter, Facebook, and other networks as a part of your original content campaign – and you must! – do it right with these social media netiquette standards.
Fact: The world’s all-time-great master of manners had the last name “Post.” Coincidence? No way.
“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others,” wrote Emily Post a century before the Internet. “If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”
For our purposes, the fork is promoting your company on social media. And you need awareness of the feelings of others to pull it off with any real impact.
When you post a link, question, quote, or video, the action isn’t taking place in a vacuum. Without a receptive audience, your efforts will be a waste of time. This goes for all content, of course – if you’re not writing for somebody, you’re writing for nobody, right? – but the challenge is magnified on social platforms precisely because you’re approaching potential clients and customers on their own stomping grounds.
So, what does this mean for your content marketing?
Let me start with an example.
The concept of social media netiquette reminds of my days running field operations for political candidates. Our campaigns placed great emphasis on meeting voters in their neighborhoods and initiating authentic conversations about the issues – conversations that we had to guide by staying on message – culminating in asks like the following:
Can we count on your vote?
How about a yard sign?
Would you be willing to sign on as a public supporter, with your name listed on the candidate’s website?
Interested in contributing to our campaign so we can keep knocking on doors and making phone calls?
Do these asks look familiar at all? Yes. You know them as calls to action:
Please read this post!
Please share this link!
Sign up for our email newsletter and receive this free guide!
Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook!
To get the responses you’re looking for on social media, you have to conduct yourself like a volunteer canvasser. What do I mean by this? Please read on!
 5 Social Media Netiquette Guidelines
 1. Start by Knocking on the Right Doors in the Right Neighborhoods
Whether in politics or marketing, you win by mobilizing your base and moving on to expansion of your core audience with data analytics, common sense, and good instincts.


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This is about targeting, and it’s twofold:
First, make sure you’re on the best social network for the task at hand, and make sure you’re tailoring your posts to the people you want to engage. In other words, avoid sharing irreverent videos on LinkedIn; avoid posting dry, jargony white papers (or pictures of dry, jargony white papers) on Snapchat; avoid Tweeting and Facebooking the exact same links using duplicate language.
2. Exercise Appropriate Conduct
We once had a couple of volunteers – more like “fans of free food,” in this case – who were canvassing shirtless and smoking cigarettes while walking down the street on a hot summer’s day. We found this out because a supporter in the neighborhood called us at the campaign headquarters.
On Election Day.
In a close race.
Which we lost.
Don’t be those shirtless dudes smoking cigarettes while knocking on decent people’s doors – your company is asking for customers’ time and business! This is Social Media Netiquette 101, if not Life 101: Be nice and polite. Don’t use foul language, get in arguments with customers who might have a complaint, hijack and domineer comment threads, violate their privacy, or post offensive stuff.
Remember: You’re a guest in their networks – they can kick you out at any time.
Social netiquette: Don’t be those shirtless dudes smoking cigarettes while knocking on doors
Click To Tweet
3. Talk AT? Talk TO? No – Talk With
This one is my personal favorite. It was my mantra on those campaigns.
You gotta give people a reason to engage.
Foster discussion with open-ended posts on Facebook. Turn your social media presence into a give and take.
The more customers can participate in your brand’s story, the better the chances they’ll be loyal and spread the word about what you’re up to.
One prized quality of killer content is its capacity to impress people with authority, influence, and thought leadership. But you can accomplish this – let alone convert site visitors into customers – only by first earning people’s trust, admiration, and affinity.
4. Don’t Outwear Your Welcome
Hell hath no fury like a voter who gets multiple phone calls, mail pieces, and door knocks in the span of, say, 12 hours. And if by some fluke this or something like it happens more than a few times, the next volunteer to reach them will probably never be heard from again, because the lasers shooting out of the voter’s eyes, combined with the unfortunate fact that they’re breathing fire, will incinerate that poor kid before he can even press the doorbell.
It’s bad news. But, hey, mistakes happen during outreach efforts. Likewise, with your social media, posts might get scheduled too closely together, or the same thing might get Tweeted twice. That’s fine – NBD.
Such occurrences are a far cry, though, from clogging up people’s Newsfeeds and Tumblrs with crap every 10 minutes. I mean, this goes back to Emily Post’s thoughts about “sensitive awareness of the feelings of others”: Would you want to have one company you follow pop up like a bad penny every time you log on to Facebook or look at your Twitter timeline?
Use your social media tools wisely: We love CoSchedule, but even they can’t do all of the work for us. Monitor your post frequencies and the corresponding metrics.
Space out your Tweets by at least a half-hour, if possible, and use discretion and good judgement in selecting posting times.
Keep Facebook posts to a couple per day, unless you’re a publisher or have a compelling reason to do more.
For other social media services, give us a call or send us an email, and we can share our advice for your particular situation.
5. Mix Discipline With Experimentation
Stick to a schedule or rotation, but be ready to pivot strategies based on your analytics. Keeping simple rules of social media netiquette in mind, have fun with your posts – in tandem with your business blog, they represent a real chance to humanize your brand and have authentic exchanges with current clients and future ones!

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**Important note** - contact our sister company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

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. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
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Netiquette IQ Quotation Of The Day - Nelson Mandela




We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
Nelson Mandela
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**Important note** - contact our sister company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

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. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
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Friday, April 10, 2015

Netiquette IQ Blog Of The Day - Can Your Emails Reveal Personality Traits?





Although email is the least clear form of communication, many things such as anger, pleasure and tones, do come through. But can personality traits be recognized by certain habits, words structure, format or other items, similar to handwriting analysis?

The article below says yes and I whole-heartedly agree! I have written about this both in my book, noted below and this blog.

The most important thing to realize about this and other similar articles is that the more you understand about your email writing skills, the better and clear your emails will be!
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April 10, 2015 // 8:00 AM from blog.hubspot.com
What Does Your Email Writing Style Say About You? [New Data]
Written by Andrea Lehr

Every day, humans make snap judgments. In one Princeton study, participants made assumptions within 100 milliseconds of being exposed to a portrait. In a similar study on virtual bias, researchers at the University of British Columbia compared respondents’ in-person impressions with those obtained by only viewing Facebook photos -- and the results revealed that passive, virtual impressions tended to be more negative.

BuzzStream and Fractl took this idea a step further to determine if any parallels exist in terms of email habits. We surveyed more than 1,200 men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 to find out how they use email, and how gender, age, and level of education impacted specific preferences and behaviors. The results reveal how email etiquette influences someone's perception of other people and compares email habits between different demographics.
Here's what we found.

Brevity is key, especially with older recipients.
When writing an email, every word counts. It starts with your subject line: Open rates drop from 24% to 17% on average when subject lines exceed 35 characters. And with mobile email open rates rising more than 300% since April 2011, the case for brevity is more important than ever.

Exactly 60% of respondents agreed that a concise email is acceptable, while less than 30% expressed similar feelings toward longer emails. Additional findings revealed:

  • The opposition to verbose emails increases with age: 70% more respondents between the ages of 55 and 64 find the practice unacceptable compared with those between 18 and 24.

  • Females have a slightly higher preference for concise emails compared with their male counterparts: More than 60% of women find shorter emails acceptable, while just over 55% of men share similar views.

  • Level of education has no effect on length: The majority of each group -- no degree, bachelor’s degree, and graduate degree -- prefers a concise email over a longer message.

  • The top five greetings for all respondents are brief: Each greeting is only one word attached to the recipient’s name.

The most objectionable email trends concern grammar, spelling, and fonts.
In today’s increasingly mobile workforce, the popularity of email continues to rise. According to a study by the Radicati Group, the total number of worldwide email users will exceed 2.8 billion in 2018, with business emails accounting for more than 139.4 billion emails sent and received each day.

And with every email you send, the content has the potential to add to or detract from both your personal and professional reputation. One of the most common mistakes? Sending an email with grammatical errors.
Most would agree on the importance of proofreading emails, but we wanted to determine if some participants were more forgiving about mistakes than others. Our research revealed the following:

  • Nearly 80% of all respondents find spelling and grammatical errors the most unacceptable offenses.
  • More than 70% of each age demographic found more than one spelling error unacceptable.
  • Nearly 10% more females find a spelling error more unacceptable than males do.
  • Respondents with graduate degrees are slightly more forgiving of grammatical errors than those with bachelor’s degrees or no degree.
  • Exactly 70% of all respondents agree that excessive punctuation should be avoided.
  •  
Out of the top 10 objectionable email trends, 4 revolve around fonts -- different font sizes, all-caps subject lines, irregular fonts, and different font colors. Over 60% of all respondents found these practices unacceptable, and further analysis revealed:

  • Changes in font size were disliked the most by respondents: Nearly 70% of respondents prefer fonts to be one size.
  • The oldest demographic is more receptive to irregular fonts than any other: Less than 30% believe that using irregular typefaces (e.g., Comic Sans, Courier New, Impact, etc.) is “totally unacceptable.”
  • The majority of male and female respondents have a preference for a single-colored font.
  • More than 85% of respondents prefer an all-lowercase subject line to one in all caps.
  • Respondents with a graduate degree tend to be slightly more lenient on multiple font sizes: Nearly 20% find the practice acceptable while less than 15% of respondents without a degree share similar views.

Older generations want to be perceived as more authentic, while younger generations want to sound smarter.
Researchers at Northwestern Law found that online communication has a limiting effect on persuasion, so it’s no surprise that, overall, most respondents admitted to rewriting email to sound more intelligent. In fact, out of the top five characteristics regarding perception, just over 40% of all respondents listed three that related to intelligence.
However, the motive behind rewriting an email can vary by degree and age. Additional findings revealed the following:

  • The top five characteristics for perception are exactly the same for male and female respondents: intelligent, knowledgeable, helpful, educated, and reliable.
  • Nearly 50% more respondents with graduate degrees want to sound reliable compared with respondents who have no degree.
  • More than 55% more respondents between the ages of 45 and 54 rewrite emails to sound more authentic compared with those between 18 and 24.
  • The younger demographic prefers to sound more knowledgeable, with nearly 50% more rewriting emails to sound more intelligent compared with 45- to 54-year-olds.
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**Important note** - contact our sister company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

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. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
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