Social Media Etiquette — Do’s & Don’ts
As this is my first blog post, I thought I should write about a topic of which I have some understanding and that some may find useful!
Hi there, my name is Ardz and I have decided to start this blog. I will write about the subjects I know including Social Media (surprise, surprise), the music industry, music and whatever else that motivates me enough to write about it.
Having worked in various aspects and positions of Social Media Management, I have created a list of Social Media Do’s and Don’ts that I believe every SM user, whether person, brand or business, should consider or take on board to gain more fans/followers. Some of these are obvious, some of these are common sense but boy you will be surprised by how many users desecrate these basic rules.
DO — Get in touch with people relevant to your media. If you have are offering something decent for someone to read, watch or listen to, there is no reason why your potential fan-base won’t enjoy it. Directly message them asking to look at your work and maybe offer an opinion. I was working with a live music photographers’ Twitter channel and through simply finding and Tweeting live music photography websites with a message and a link, a couple of them liked and featured his work on the front page of their website. Easy and free promotion.
DON’T — #teamfollowback — not around so much anymore but these (often) teenage, attention-whore hashtags and trends should be avoided at all costs.
DO — Credit other professional’s work that you’re using appropriately. Best example here is the case of American band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus earlier this year posting a cropped, lesser quality picture of their guitarist taken by Rohan Anderson’s, a live music photographer. The band posted the picture on their Facebook (which has over 1.4 million fans!) without crediting, paying or seeking permission from Rohan and were surprised to find him pissed off when he got in touch with them. Read his full blog on the incident, the whole thing is a case study for photographers’ rights and shitty music industry etiquette: http://www.rohanandersonphotography.com/red-jumpsuit-apparatus-copyright-violation/
DON’T — be a dick/offensive. See the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus example above or read on X-Factor winner James Arthur’s Twitter disaster earlier this year. It’s easy to become a dick online (as we know the internet community loves lambasting online dicks) and if you are expressing your dick points on social media, everyone sees it. Unless that is the desired draw of your account, don’t be a dick! Also, you can have an opinion without having to offend anyone but if you can’t explain your point of view properly on social media then avoid the subject all together. If you’re a troll, well… you are what you tweet.
DO — offer opinions on what you post, isn’t that the point of social media? I see far too many channels that simply re-post the same articles without offering any interaction or insight. Step it up and show your opinions. The ‘Quote Retweet’ function on phones is made for this as well as the ‘Share’ button of Facebook.
DON’T — post things without thinking about them first. Spur of the moment tweets are sometimes hard to catch what you really want to get across in your message. Plan your message and consider the aspects of it and how your followers/fans will perceive it.
DO — if you are going to post a spur of the moment message, remember there are certain aspects you can aim for to make it memorable and sharable. According to Twitter guru David Schneider (@davidschneider) “Your perfect tweets will have at least one of the following: information, insight, and humour. Information is stuff that people want to know. Insight is ‘here you are behind the scenes’, and humour is humour.” This statement could not ring more true for Twitter users that aren’t a celebrity of sorts yet have massive amounts of followers. Offering their take on a current affair or topic and if they have a consistent way of appealingly messaging on social media, more users will look to them for their opinion or take.
DON’T — HAVE BAD GRAMMAR (Unless intentional or abbreviated)! Seriously, in this day and age?! Just Google a word if you’re not sure of its spelling.
DO — personalise your SM account. Another point from David Schneider ‘successful tweeters usually sound as if they are writing an email to a mate’. Personalising a SM account changes it from being a person/brand to being a person/brand with a soul, caring about what a fan/follower says. A good example of this is the Tetley Twitter account (@tetley_teafolk). It tweets with the caring and warm nature as if it was one of cartoon characters from its advert sitting at home, having a cup of tea and chatting to the fans. This really is identity branding for the 21st Century and many companies have caught onto it.
Lastly, from David Levin (@davidlevin123), some points for great Tweeting —
· Keep it short. Don’t feel compelled to use all 140 characters unless you need to. Research shows that followers prefer short sweet tweets.
· Keep it coming. Be the account that does that recurring thing (be it a weekly Twitter quiz, monthly Twitter interview or a Friday giveaway)
· Know your @s from your elbow! Remember that starting a tweet with an @ means that it’s only seen by that person and your mutual followers
· Don’t #overuse hashtags. They are important when they’re used #correctly but are #pointless and #annoying when #overused
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