Facebook – love it or loathe it, it can be a great tool to gather and nurture connections and potential clients. The temptation is to dive straight in gung-ho and get your name out there as quickly as possible.
After all, with Facebook reaching a billion users this month, the urge to get a piece of that action can be overwhelming!
Before you dive in and start promoting your business, take a moment to read these Facebook Netiquette guidelines.
Basic Facebook Netiquette Do’s and Don’ts
Do
- Create a page for your business
- Share other people’s content, and acknowledge the source
- Monitor your posts, both on your profile and page and respond to comments
- Answer questions posted on your page. If people wanted to call you or email, they would have done that first…
- Socialise and mingle, like related pages and introduce yourself
- Define your boundaries – it’s ok to talk about your business on your profile, but separate your friends into lists so your nearest and dearest aren’t bombarded and annoyed by your updates
- Remember that you represent your business online. If you do connect with business contacts on your personal profile, remember that at 3am and resist the urge to post the drunk table dancing pics, or fire off an abusive rant at your ex…
Don’t
- Update ALL IN CAPS or with a plethora of punctuation!!!1! (see what I did there?)
- “Invite” people to your groups without asking. Unlike events, an invite drags people straight into the group, there’s no option to decline
- Repost the same promotion day in day out, it’s social networking not social selling
- Promote your page, website, products or services on other people’s pages without permission
- Repost updates without checking the source – you know the ones , “Facebook are publishing all your private messages” or “Facebook are a paid platform unless you…”
Do you have any Facebook netiquette tips to add? I’d love your thoughts in the comments…
Basic Facebook Netiquette: Do’s and Don’ts for Busy Business Owners by Jan Kearney
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I’d also add: Don’t tag someone with personal information…personal message them, instead. Don’t write on someone’s wall about plans ’cause what if the person doesn’t know everyone personally and you’re revealing when they are out of town or not at home? 🙂 I also don’t appreciate it when people scrape my content without acknowledging the source, as you described.
Great tips Lisa, thanks for sharing 🙂
Nice stuff here. I would add ‘telling people you are about to go to bed’, either on a profile or a page (yes, I’ve seen it) 🙂
I never sleep… Good point though Ginny 🙂
This is a very nice list of do’s and dont’s, and I love lists. It’s such much easier to go down a list that it is to plow through lots of prose. 🙂 I’ll have to look around your site, because I’m not sure what a local business marketing consultant is. I assume you work with brick & mortar to help them get an online presence. Thanks for this post.
Hi Leslie, yes I work with bricks and mortar businesses (mainly) and help them get visible online and integrate it with their traditional marketing too. Thanks for popping in and commenting 🙂
Thanks for the refresher! I need a reminder now and then, as I sometimes get carried away by what I think others are doing to be ‘successful.’ I do want to be successful, but I don’t want to sacrifice integrity to do so!
Hi Brenda, it’s easy to get a bit carried away isn’t it? Be yourself, share, socialise and point people back to your blog. Takes time to build up, but it works 🙂 Thanks for popping in and taking the time to comment.
Hi Jan,
A fantastic list of do’s and don’t’s. Enjoyed reading about my pet hates! 🙂 Also reminds me that I need to find time to create a business page, and separate my friends and business contacts into lists.
It is interesting though – much of it seems like common sense, but still – there are so many businesses which miss the point that Facebook, like all the other networks, is just a way to connect with potential customers, and the way it is done determines how their customers will perceive them in the long term… And still, there are plenty of bulls in the china shop!
The basics of business relationships are quite simple – similar to personal ones – treat others as you want to be treated yourself. Break this rule, and you are in trouble.
Love coming to your blog! 🙂
Galina
We all have our pet hates! Love having you visit my blog too, Galina. Thanks for your thoughts 🙂
Hi Jan,
I love coming to your blog… always learning something new here!
I especially dislike the people who want to be friends with me and the first thing they post on my time is, I have a facebook page at blah blah blah… please visit it.
Tells me instantly they wanted to become friends just to get one more LIKE. Doesn’t take long for me to delete them. 🙂
– Bonnie
Hi Bonnie – I’m glad you enjoyed the post 🙂 Oh yes, people like that get defriended pretty quickly!
On the ‘don’t’ list, I’d add Like a Page (or friend a person) and immediately start spamming with a private thread about your products/services. You’ve already covered this one but it amazes me when people join a Group and the first thing they do is jump in with a link and pitch without spending a moment getting familiar with the culture. Thanks for another great post, Jan.
Hi Nanette – I’m with you on that one. I help moderate a small local group – that consists of deleting ads, warning, finally just gritting my teeth and banning people. The people who post like that don’t contribute let alone look at guidelines. Thanks for popping in again, Nanette. I appreciate it 🙂