As with all areas of life there is a set of commonly accepted rules that outline the dos and don’ts of participation in social media, particularly in a professional or business context. Interestingly, these rules vary little from those that govern face to face social contact.

It is notable that these rules of social media etiquette differ between each social media platform. For example how you should act on Facebook isn’t necessarily equally acceptable on Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth.

Confused? There’s no need, here’s a simple guide to minding your social media manners…

1. Business not pleasure – Keep your business and personal lives as separate online as you do in real life. That means separate business and personal social media accounts (where possible). As shown with recent high profile legal cases, business and pleasure do not mix well online.
2. Politeness pays – The basic tenets of social interaction apply online – be polite, honest and helpful.
3. Be accessible – Make it easy for people to find and identify you – it’s important to complete your profiles as fully as you can. Use your own photo too; you need to be as recognisable as possible.
4. Build your reputation – Social media platforms are not well suited solely as a direct sales medium. Boost your business by offering information of value, building your reputation and generating interest in what you can do to help others.
5. Remember who can see you – It’s easy to forget the extent of the audience that you have online – be careful what you write and never say anything that you wouldn’t want everyone to see.
6. ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ – Make sure your posts are spelt correctly and are grammatically correct, basic errors can really damage how contacts see and rate you.
7. Horses for courses – There are some key differences in how you should use different platforms. Twitter and Facebook, even in a business context, are less formal in tone than LinkedIn and so your posts should reflect the differences. Don’t forget that, if you have your social media accounts linked to update each other; your posts should be written with all audiences in mind.
8. Privacy – Privacy is important and private matters should be dealt with by email or using the private message function attached to most platforms.
9. Respect – while social media is still relatively new the etiquette governing its use remains in flux. Respect how other people choose to use their accounts, whether to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ you or not and remember that you also have choices in how to represent yourself online.

These pointers are a broad brush summary of today’s social media etiquette – for some more in depth detail you may like to check out the following link or find out more yourself…

http://socialmediatoday.com/michaelblueeyeddigital/338078/how-practice-social-media-etiquette