Mzuri Design Blog » Social Media

Mind your social media P’s and Q’s – the etiquette of social media in business

zoe — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:54:03 +0000

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…

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.
Politeness pays – The basic tenets of social interaction apply online – be polite, honest and helpful.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
Privacy – Privacy is important and private matters should be dealt with by email or using the private message function attached to most platforms.
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

Tweet your Face on Google Plus

victoria — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:35:21 +0000

Google Plus is continuing its assault on Twitter and Facebook, this time by allowing brands to set up pages with which they can interact with their customers. This free of charge addition will allow companies to split the people that follow them into different demographics using the ‘Circles’ feature.

While they still have a long way to go in terms of achieving the buy-in that Facebook and Twitter have (Facebook alone has ten times more members, than Google Plus), if anyone stands a chance at knocking them off their perch, it’s Google.

Think about it; you might have a website and ezines that all link to your Google Analytics account. Now, you can integrate your brand page with that analysis too. Got an AdWords campaign running? Why not link that up too. Google is so much a part of our lives that this new functionality, potentially, offers a complete picture of your performance, which is something Twitter and Facebook will unlikely ever manage.

True, Google will still need to rely on people setting up accounts and using the social media platform – as well as all the others they use - but we think that this is an opportunity that companies and brands shouldn’t ignore….

Google’s new rules and the impact on social media

kate — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:53:33 +0000

Google’s recent announcements will have a big impact on how we all approach SEO and social media in 2010. The first change is that Google will now include real-time data in search, including status updates from Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and blogs. So your ‘tweets’ need to be brand aligned, relevant and timely! A recent article in B2B Marketing magazine describes tweets as needing to be ‘mini-press releases’ – a really good description to follow if you’re new to the social media arena. However, be careful, don’t just make your updates sound like a list of keyword search terms as users will know what you’re up to and you could risk damaging the value of your brand. You should always strive to be authentic and useful to your audience.

The other major change from Google is the implementation of Web History, an opt-out personalised search feature which remembers the sites you visit and places them higher up the search results. Smaller companies will be affected more by this move as it becomes harder to enter the marketplace where there are larger, more well-known players, who will appear more consistently in page 1 of Google. These businesses should perhaps look to more traditional methods of marketing, such as direct mail to get potential clients to search for them by name rather than by service. Funny how things eventually always come full circle!