By Melissa Walsh

Social Media Marketing (SMM) Etiquette

“Facebook is like a coffee shop. Everyone is there for his or her own reasons, but it is a great place to strike up a conversation.” 
— Shama Hyder Kabani in The Zen of Social Media Marketing

The first rule of SMM etiquette is keeping in mind that people aren’t using SMM to shop; they’re there for conservation and to express their point of view. Your market prospects don’t want to be marketed to on SMM. They are marketing themselves as, not just who they are, but as who they want to be and how they want to be perceived. SMM forums, Kabani explains, are tidy niche markets in a virtual coffee shop. If you push sales and in-your-face advertising, they’ll feel awkward and leave the coffee shop.

To interact with your prospects using SMM, you must identify closely with your followers, so closely that your brand becomes part of their identity. So while being mindful that overall trust in advertising is eroding and that your target market prospects enter into SMM for conversation, follow these SMM etiquette guidelines:

1. Don’t attempt to fool or manipulate a market; it will only backfire on you.
2. Don’t “like” and “follow” everything that enters your suggestions feed. Be strategic and selective.
3. Respect people’s virtual space.
4. Don’t make gaining traffic your chief goal. Retain traffic with quality content and interaction.
5. Use your real name. People like personal interaction.
6. Balance being proactive with not being pushy.
7. Avoid infomercials. Your SMM video posts should be no more than two to three minutes in duration with continual action depicting a glimpse into the “secret” world of your product/service.

Kabani stresses, when employing SMM in your marketing strategy, understand how it differs from traditional marketing communications. While traditional marketing speaks loudly to a market, even sometimes shouts at and dominates, SMM thrives in a community of friendly conversation with a market. So to become considered good company among your market, listening and responding in a way that makes prospects feel heard go a long way. 

In other words, while traditional marketing pushes a product/service out to a market through display advertising and direct sales copy, SMM pulls a market into a message through relationship-building and spontaneous word-of-mouth market penetration.