Social Network Marketing: Etiquette for Businesses
There is a big difference between having a Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. page for personal use than for business, but some still seem to make the mistake of doing the same things on the business side. Internet marketing is a lot easier than people tend to make it out to be. Sure if your expertise is treating Plantar Fasciitis, and you never took a computer class in your life it might seem difficult to get involved in socail networks. The way places like Facebook are set up though makes it extremely easy for anyone to set up their own page.
One of the biggest problems with people that are "new" to the internet, or at least socail interaction online is the tendancy to be very annoying. Yes...that is simplistic, but think about when you first got e-mail and you were the person that sent out forwards to 50 people at a time. Only new people do this regularly and end up being put on their own friend's ignore lists because of it. This has become something that many businesses tend to do when they get into social networks as well. Don't do that. You are a professional and people don't care about chain letters. Besides, it doesn't help you to do things like this because it has NOTHING to do with your business. LEave the comedy for your own time, and to the professionals.
Although that isn't why I wrote this post initially, the annoying factor is something people should understand. We get so much information sent to us o a daily basis that if you just add more "crap" to our lives we aren't going to want to have anything to do with you. People dislike spam for a reason. It is untargeted, and it isn't wanted. We don't want things from people we don't know, and we certainly don't want things from businesses that should be kept for private use. Especially if I am going to try and network with you. HAve some self control. Yeah the internet is really cool, but we already know that. You aren't the first to send it to us, and you won't be the last. Just don't send us things that have nothing to do with your business, and our relationship with your business.
Ahem...now that is out of the way take a look at some simple ideas to keep you grounded in the social networkign community. Learn to interact with the people that interact with you in the ways they interact with you.
