Etiquette of business social media
“Hi, I’m Nicholas.”
“Hi, I’m David. Nice to meet you. Didn’t you used to work at eBay?”
This was how my conversation started in a recent meeting and it sparked a lively discussion on the etiquette of social networking in business.
So how do the old rules of business etiquette and codes of behaviour map to our new web2.0 social media reality? Nicholas, in his early thirties, respond quite well to this enquiry and it seemed he found it natural for someone to look him up on LinkedIn prior to a meeting. His colleague Jonathan admitted that he had dropped out of social media by letting his LinkedIn page go and only checked his Facebook every month or so. I suspect that their older colleague might not have found my stalking so flattering.
In this post I discuss my thoughts on the etiquette of social media in business and hope that you will enliven this article with anecdotes of your own.
Making a connection
Do you make contact before or after that important meeting? Do you want to show them that you are taking an interest and trying to understand them or will they take it as presumptuous and creepy? Would James Packer accept my offer to connect without knowing me? LinkedIn has made this more difficult and begun to respond to real-world business etiquette by insisting that if you have no professional connection you must know their email address.
Remember that other people can see who you are connecting to and may make a judgement about the frequency of your connections – this is just like holding a big party and inviting everyone you ever met, it will make your guests feel insignificant.
Things to consider:
- Assess the strength of your connection
- How do you think your contact uses social media? Did you research them?
- Always write a personal message when connecting
Mapping the real world rules to social media
- Spruiking
- Spamming
- Talking trash
- Being overly familiar
Managing your profile
- Keep your Facebook profile private
- Don’t boast on LinkedIn, you have no control over who sees it
- Keep your profiles up to date
Stalking
When do you look too desperate? Should you tell people that you have ‘Google stalked’ them? Will they take it as someone keenly interested and diligent or will you look like a freak?
Recommendations
Don’t accept a recommendation if you don’t indent to reciprocate.
Only send a request for a recommendation to selected people you have worked closely with, if you send these invitations to everyone at once you risk looking like a salesman. This often signals an imminent change in employment.
Introductions
Facebook vs LinkedIn
- Keeping friends and family in facebook, colleagues and business contacts in LinkedIn
- Never feel pressured to accept a Facebook invitation from a business associate, colleague or client. Be up-front about how you use each service: “Sorry, but I just use Facebook for family and old friends – how about we connect on LinkedIn”
Further reading
Forbes.com: Are You Practicing Proper Social Networking Etiquette?
LinkedIn.com: What is the right etiquette for brokering an introduction between two people?
