Social media is the new form of communication and we all could learn a few things about the proper “etiquette”. I know right, etiquette when posting on social. It seems crazy, but it is a thing….a real thing!
Netiquette.
Such a strange word. Defined as: “the correct or acceptable way of communicating on the internet”.
There are even netiquette rules too!
I know it’s weird. I learned about it 20 years ago when it first became a thing. Mostly it was just about emails and work related stuff, but how does it apply to social media platforms these days? What really got me thinking about social media etiquette recently was because I am an admin and moderator on several Facebook pages. As an admin, you are able to see who in the group has seen a post in addition to who gave which “like” emoji.
There’s nothing more frustrating as an admin of a page than when you put forth lots of effort to create something awesome and engaging and absolutely no one likes or comments on the post. What makes it suck more is when you can see that 78 people in a group of 101 have “seen” the post. Like, come on people! Someone give me a like or laugh or a comment, especially when I had a question in the write up. Like really?!?
One would think that common courtesy would be that you see a post and click “like” to acknowledge reading the post. That’s when social media etiquette popped into my head.
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What is proper in regards to “liking” posts?
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Is there a netiquette in place for social media?
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How should the author of a post respond to encourage comments?
The Google hunt began.
To my surprise, there were a lot of blog posts and such in regards to netiquette, however they were all regarding business pages, just like I had learned many years ago. But what about personal pages? Nothing. Ok, well nothing I could find after 30 minutes of searching.
Basically, it’s not cool to beg or ask people to like your posts.
The author can include questions as really the only way to encourage comments, but ultimately it’s up to the reader if they choose to like, laugh, love, hate, cry, or comment. The main goal with social media netiquette is to treat others with respect and that personal information including posts, images, and videos should not be shared without consent or giving credit accordingly.
To be respectful is to show consideration for someone or something. Would this then not include the courtesy of acknowledgement to posts written by those you follow? If you are scrolling through and reading posts from friends, family, and groups that you are in, why would you not recognize their messages? Why only comment or like a select few and not all that you come across?
Maybe I’m old school, but when having a conversation with someone it is respectful to converse back and acknowledge what they have said. Social media is the new form of communication, but courtesy and polite manners should still be executed.
So go like the post already!
