Social Media Etiquette 4 Do’s & 4 Don’ts: How To Act Like The Church Online
Another social media author here at Salty Waffle has posted some great articles about online behaviors. Since we are representing Christ, we all want to try to behave in a way that brings glory to God. With social media being such a foreign land to some of us, it is sometimes hard to know how to act. Here is an overview of Mitchell’s tips to help you out.
Some Things We Should Do
1. Be Helpful: Create or share content with people that you know they will find interesting or have asked about. Answering a specific question makes you a part of a conversation and helps make you an expert. Taking 5 minutes to answer a question for even just one person or taking a little more time to publish a helpful piece of content can end up putting you in front of thousands of people, any of which could end up being an important part of your network.
2. Be Real: Be yourself online. Studies show that people are generally honest about themselves online, fakes will be exposed. The real you will attract the right people to you or your brand. Experts say that the key to an awesome blog and overall online presence is authenticity.
3. Say Thanks: If people out in the blogosphere or twittersphere help you out in some way, thank them. It seems simple, but the truth is that scientifically, thanks gets you far. If you establish that people who take time out of their day to spread your word will get thanked, it is more likely they will keep doing it and others will start. For example if someone takes the time to repost your tweet and share your link on Twitter, also known as retweets (RT), say thanks.
4. Twitter #FollowFriday: Recommended the twitterers you like by using the hashtag #followfriday or #ff. Everyone likes to hear nice things about themselves and promoting other people is a good way to get started on building a partnership beneficial to you both.
Some Things We Shouldn’t
1. Long Links in Twitter: Putting a long, ugly link in your post is a real turn off. To make link shortening easy, Twitter clients and even Twitter has built in link shorteners. No one wants to read through all those slashes and dots when they could be looking at a cute little bit.ly link instead.
2. Updates Spanning Multiple Tweets: When you just can’t seem to fit your post into 140 characters, it’s never OK to just finish your though in a second tweet. Twitter is a micro-blogging network, there isn’t a place for updates longer than 140 characters, that’s the nature of the network.
3. RSVP-ing Practices In Facebook: My friend actually put a great article up on my wall because I am so bad about this one myself. Facebook makes it so easy to reply to event invitations that everyone either replies yes, with no intention of going, or replies ‘maybe’ and never decides one way or the other in a courteous amount of time. You would never dream of telling someone in person that will show and then not without even a word, but in the world of social media and Facebook, it’s a common practice.
4. Timely Responses In Facebook: With Facebook messages and messages on other social networks it seems fine to take a really long time to respond. Lengths of time that wouldn’t even be acceptable by email standards which are pretty relaxed. Perhaps it’s because messages from your social network are assigned a lower level of priority because of the close relationships you have with those people? Do you feel email is more urgent? Either way, I know I sometimes forget about Facebook messages for weeks and friends do the same to me.
Thank you Mitchell for your great articles that provided this content: