Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely valuable tool to give to your clients so that their business capabilities are enhanced and so that they have a greater chance of succeeding through their online business capabilities and interactions.

Please forgive the constant repetition of the phrase “Content Is King”; however, truer words were never written. The way that you and your business will succeed through your social media interactions is with your content. Of course, it goes without saying that your content has to be well written, exciting, and informative. The fact is that you have tremendous capabilities when it comes to providing your clients with valuable content. The big question, now that you have the content to share with your clients, is how you truly give them what they want and need in order for them to succeed in their businesses.

Find out what they want and need

Sometimes the most simplistic approach is the most effective one. When it comes to clients, the majority of them won’t mind if you ask them what they want. In fact, it will probably make them happy to know that you are definitely putting their needs first by asking them how you can solve their problems. A great first step when it comes to gathering information about what your customers want and need is to send them a survey (through a free survey tool like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang). Once you have signed up for one of those services, you will need to create some questions, such as

• How can you help them to run their business more effectively?
• What do they consider the most valuable among your products and/or services and why?
• Exactly what do they lose sleep over when it comes to their business?
• What improvements would they like to see when it comes to your business offerings?

Your questions should be clear and concise and, of course, they should focus on the needs of  your particular target market. There is nothing worse for the recipient than long-winded and/or numerous questions. You may also want to consider offering an incentive as a reward for taking the time to answer your survey (such as a discount coupon, free gift, etc). This will make your clients happy and it will cause your relationship to grow stronger. 

The responses to your survey

After you have gathered the responses to your survey questions, you need to study them very carefully. Be prepared to receive both positive and negative comments. As painful as it may be to receive negative comments, you should be open minded and use them as a learning and growing experience for your business. Those comments may make you aware of an issue that you didn’t know existed. You can’t fix something that you don’t know about. As a result, you will be improving upon your existing offerings and presenting superior products and/or services. You should ask yourself the following questions based on the results of the survey:

• What additional services can I provide to my clients based on their feedback from the survey?
• What specific changes can I make to what I am offering?
• How can I fulfill my clients’ needs in a unique fashion?

Once you have come up with answers to those questions, it will be time to take action. With the feedback in mind, you can provide effective and helpful content that the search engines will love. The content should contain what offerings from what the clients asked for. If you are at all unclear about how to focus your content in that direction, your hints are in the feedback from your clients (look for the strongest and most prevalent keywords and key phrases).

SEO content writing results

After you have formulated your plan and have added the effective content to your website (or other elements of your web presence), you need to find out if what you did was effective.  Keywords and key phrases are at the heart of what is important when it comes to content and SEO. The way to truly measure the results is by looking at an analytics tool (such as Google Analytics). This will tell you where the clients are going.

Once you have identified that information, you will be able to understand what your clients want and need. There is no better source than your clients to know what you need to do in order to make them happy.

Conclusion

SEO is an extremely important and useful tool when it comes to the success of your business. It isn’t just an acronym that people utter with no strength behind it. It is a critical part of your business’s success when it comes to online interactions and online relationships. The more valuable the information that you share with other people  is, the stronger and more long lasting your relationships will be. That also means that the quality of your SEO must be top notch. Of course, that will ultimately translate into more success.

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Most people are familiar with Google at this point. It is a very popular search engine. Google’s social platform, Google+, has a tool called Google Circles, which enables the users to categorize people into different groups or lists.

The purpose of Google Circles

The intended purpose of Google Circles is to allow people to share their content with the most appropriate people. It also allows people to follow other people’s content if it is deemed interesting and valuable.

The privacy aspect of Google Circles

Whoever is a member of one of your Google Circles is not able to see any of the other members of the circle. They are not able to tell specifically who is in the circle or how many people are members of the circle. Google Circles mimics real-life relationships. When it comes to a circle of friends (or even a circle of business associates), you are very selective about who you will allow to be a part of your circles. The people whom you choose for your circles are people you respect and admire, close friends, potential business partners, and people with whom you have some sort of emotional connection. The members of the circles have no awareness of the other members of the circles. If they eventually have an awareness, it is usually not detrimental; however, in the beginning, it is up to the person who is forming the circles to have control over who is a part of them.

Circles are circles and groups are groups

There are several differences between circles and groups and it is important to understand that they are not interchangeable. The following are ways to differentiate circles from groups:

In groups:

• All of the members of the group are aware of who the other group members are.
• All of the members of the group understand the objectives of the group.
• All of the members of the group know the name of the group.

In Circles:

• A Google Circle is an exclusive group of people. With Google Circles, there is nothing public about it. You can think about it as an extremely exclusive “country club.” Along with the privacy, unfortunately, the concept is difficult for some people to understand because of its complexity.
   
• Circles can limit who has access to any given content and others who have not been given access to that particular content will see “Limited” at the top of the post.
   
• With Google Circles, you can control who you want to share specific information with, whereas you can’t control it with groups.
   
• With Google Circles, you are able to keep the number of people at a comfortable level for you. If you feel that someone is worth adding to your circle, it will be a decision that you have not made lightly or quickly.

When you first set up your Circles, you can drag people from your lists in Google+ to form your circles. It is as easy as click and drag. The uniqueness of it is in the control that it allows you and the owner of the circles.

Conclusion

Google+ Circles is an excellent organizational tool. To have the capability of not only forming circles of people (for business and personal use) but then being able to control who is allowed to receive your content is amazing. This is a unique feature that will help you and your business to prosper more and more toward your journey of ultimate success.

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You use Twitter constantly for your business but you may not be aware that Twitter has some limitations that may affect your use. A lot of the limitations may not be any big deal but they are important to know.

A limited number of followers

Once your Twitter account is following 2,000 other Twitter users, if you try to follow additional people, you will be limited by ratios that are specific to your account.  If you have that many followers (which many people do not), you will get a message from Twitter once you have reached that limit. Two thousand people is a high number for “regular folks.” You will receive notification that you have reached that limit and you will have to wait until you are given permission to go over that limit before you can follow any additional people. If you are connected to someone on Twitter and they are at their 2,000 follower limit, please don’t take it personally and unfollow them. They don’t really have any control over the situation. If you reach your Twitter limit and have other people with whom you wish to be connected, you need to look at your others and consider if you can do without following them. If you feel that you can, you can substitute the new followers for the ones that you already had.

Your following percentage is higher

Twitter allows you a slightly higher percentage of people whom you are allowed to follow than who are allowed to follow you. According to Twitter, the limit is not a set number. It is different for every person and it is based on the ratio of followers to following. Once you have hit the limit, an error message will appear in your browser. Once you have more followers, you will be able to follow additional people as well.

Daily following ability

You are only allowed to follow 1,000 people a day (this is pretty generous). You should be careful not to send tweets too frequently to the same followers, however, because you will hit the limit, which may lock your Twitter account for up to 24 hours. It is a good idea to follow people during less-popular hours (perhaps during non-business hours) in order to avoid your limit. You wouldn’t want your limit to prevent you from tweeting some really important content.

Daily tweet limit

Your daily tweet limit is 1,000. Of course, that is pretty generous. Depending on how actively you tweet, you will most likely not get close to the limit of 1,000 tweets a day.

Hourly tweets

If you divide 1,000 tweets in a 24-hour period by 24, you can do 41 tweets in an hour. What is the chance that  you will exceed that in any given hour during business (or even during your personal time)? You also have a limit of 250 direct messages a day. If you compare direct messages to Emails, would you really send that many Emails in one day?

Conclusions

Twitter is an excellent social media tool for business. It is important to be aware of what it can do for you and what it can’t do. It works most effectively one on one and is a tool that is tailor made for customization. Twitter is constantly striving to meet the needs of its users and feedback is taken very seriously and the suggestions that are communicated are implemented to a great extent. The tweets always cater to the individual. The chances are great that you will not go anywhere near the limits that have been discussed here. However, it is very important to be aware of the rules that Twitter has established so that you can use it in the most effective way for your business.

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If you write and submit a lot of articles to business directories,  you are aware that there are usually strict submission guidelines that need to be followed. All parts of the article are included, including the title.

Many of the article directories have specific rules about article titles and if they are not adhered to, your article will most likely be rejected. The rest of your article may totally be top notch but if you don’t follow the rules regarding the title to the letter, you won’t get anywhere. It is a shame that if your article is rejected because of a formatting issue. Your title must attract real people and encourage them to click on the link and read your article. You need to make sure that your article title is as interesting as possible.

Don’t underestimate the power of a title

You need to recognize how important titles are and how much thought you need to put into writing them. No doubt, you are spending a lot of time and putting in a great deal of careful effort into writing the body of your article. Are you devoting the same kind of care to your article title? If you are haphazardly putting your title together without too much thought, you are making a mistake. Of course, since you have put all of that wonderful effort into writing your article, you don’t want to do anything that would cause it to be rejected because of a technicality.

There are some standard formatting rules that need to be followed:

Title case

Your titles should always be in sentence case. Sentence case means that the first letter of every major word in the title (not articles like “the” and ”a”). You shouldn’t ever use all capital letters in your title. All capital letters just doesn’t look professional.

Impeccable spelling and grammar

If you have any grammatical or spelling errors in your title, the decision maker at the business directory probably won’t even bother reading beyond the title. He or she may think (and justifiably so) that if you don’t care enough to ensure that there are no mistakes in your title, why would you care about the rest of it. It makes your content seem like it is mediocre at best. Errors can easily result in your article being rejected. One of the critical places to put strategic and effective keywords or key phrases is in your title. The keywords and key phrases will be picked up by the search engines. If, on the other hand, you have errors in your title, people who are searching for you won’t be able to find you and that defeats your purpose entirely.

The length of your title

The goal of the article title (always) is to let the reader understand what your article is about. If you don’t have enough words in your title, it will be very difficult for your readers to understand what your article is about and to make an informed decision about whether they want to continue reading. A large number of publishers have a minimum word count for the title of two words. Your title needs to be long enough to communicate clearly what your article is about.

Punctuation

You shouldn’t use quotation marks or most other punctuation marks in your title. Many punctuation marks are not compatible with html and they will be lost in the translation. Additionally, you shouldn’t put a period at the end of your title because it causes the reader to pause and you don’t want them to pause. You want to have a continuity and a flow that is not interrupted. Readers are easily distracted anyway. You don’t want to do anything that causes further distractions. Many article directories will reject your article because of a period in the title.

Conclusion

As small of a thing as the title of your article seems, it isn’t small at all. There is a great deal of thought that goes into the title and writing it so that it entices your readers and compels them to continue reading the rest of your article and then interacting with you and building a relationship with you that will last for a very long time. Remember, you must always write the title with the objective of getting the article accepted for publication and, at the same time, enticing the reader and causing them to want to keep reading what you are writing.

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If you have a website or are researching websites, you’re sure to have heard the term SEO bandied about quite a bit. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO techniques are used to improve the visibility and ranking of a website when people conduct a search on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Generally speaking, the higher on the search page that a website displays and the more frequently a page ap­pears in searches, the more visitors it will receive from search engine users. How optimal is it to appear on the first page of a search? Very. Up to 42% of search users click the top-ranking link, as few as 8% click the second-ranking link. Click-through rate (CTR) drops thereafter. Sixty-two percent of users click a link on the first page of search results, 23 percent go to the second page.

The drive to come up on the first page of a search — and in the first, second, or third place — is one determined by traffic and relevance and can be an expensive one. Most small businesses may not be able to justify the time and money spent to come first in search engines that continually change their algorithms, and to outrank simi­lar, larger companies with more traffic. However, there are some things you can do that will help.

First Steps

When optimizing a website, you must first consider how search engines work and what search engines are used more often by your target customer. Also, think about how people conduct a search. What actual search terms might they enter when searching for a business or ser­vice such as yours?

The next step is for you, or your website developer, to edit website content to increase its relevance to specific keywords and to be sure everything is properly coded to remove barriers that may prevent search engine “spiders” from crawling through and indexing your site. Since effective SEO often requires changes to the HTML source code of a website and to a website’s content, SEO tactics can, and should, be incorporated into web design and development.

Five Things You Can Do for Better SEO

1. Title Tags – Each page should have a unique, descriptive title tag. A description relative to the content on the page helps people who are searching for you, your product, or your services.

2. Content – Content is King. Unique, infor­mative, and relevant site content helps SEO. Use keywords within that content that you feel best describe your business and will be words customers will search for when look­ing for services that your business supplies.

3. Links – Build working links between the pages of your website and with other trusted websites. Ask business affiliates and other trusted businesses to link to your site as well. You should also use Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to create links to your website and encourage followers to visit.

4. Keywords – When your website developer lists keywords in the HTML files of your pag­es, be sure that those same words appear with frequency in the content on your site.

5. Updates – Fresh content will bring search engine “spiders” back to index your site, and will bring your customers back as well, so update your site as frequently as possible. You may want to update some pages once or twice a month, and others less frequently. The more traffic you receive, the higher you will come up in searches.

Conclusion

SEO is a critical part of online business success. If your content is not recognized and ranked highly by search engines, people will not be able to find you and if they can’t find you, they won’t be able to interact with you. It is those relationships that eventually lead to greater success for you and your business.

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Your blog is for your business but it is also intended to grab the attention of your target audience, which is not such an easy thing to do. You need to write exciting and compelling content that captures their attention.

It doesn’t make any sense to spend a great deal of time on research, thought, and subsequently, writing your content if nobody but you actually reads it. In this day and age of technology, everyone is constantly being bombarded with vast amounts of content on every topic imaginable. So much content is being fed to people that they don’t know what to do with it on many occasions. If people read everything that came their way, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else in their professional or personal lives. With that concept in mind, it is very important that the content that you are writing and sharing with other people is so strong and compelling that it is constantly being kept at the top of the pile of important things to read.

A brilliant opening paragraph

The first thing that you need to consider is your opening paragraph. This paragraph is also called a teaser paragraph because it teases the reader just enough to want to continue reading. Remember, you only have three seconds to capture the attention of the reader enough for them to want to read on. So, you better make it really good. It is critical to your success as a content writer that you share content that is thought provoking and really grabs your readers. Considering that the first few sentences of your opening paragraph are the ones that will be picked up by the RSS feeds, they must really pop. When people scan an article, their eyes move across the page. That is why using bold type and bullet points or numbers is so effective. Once the reader’s eyes have moved across the page, they tend to look down the page as opposed to scanning subsequent lines horizontally.

Use emotion

Whatever your content is about, there must be an emotional element to it. People react with feelings. Knowing that, you need to make sure that you use keywords and key phrases that affect people emotionally. Whatever the reason other people have for taking an interest in your content, they definitely have a reason. Your main objective when it comes to relating to other people is to help them to solve their problems. If you can do that, you will not only be building meaningful, lasting relationships with them but you will also be gaining loyal clients at some point. If you use the most effective keywords and key phrases, there is a guarantee that you will touch your readers. It is also very important that you speak to your readers at a level that is comfortable for them. Don’t use big words merely because you feel that it makes you seem impressive. If you use words that they don’t understand, what good will it do for you? If you use simple, straightforward language and the concepts of what you are trying to say are ones that they can relate to, that is really the best approach to take.

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)?

When other people read your content, they are spending the time to do that because they are looking for a solution to their problems. They aren’t interested in how great  you and your business are. They aren’t even too interested in what you have accomplished so far (in your business or otherwise). All they need from you is to help them make their problems go away. If you are considering writing something that you think is interesting but that doesn’t really benefit them in any way, it isn’t worth writing. People want to learn  from you and they want to be excited by what you are offering. If you want to maintain the relationship with them, give them something that they can walk away with. Strong relationships are ones where the two people trust each other and feel that the other is credible.

The presentation of  your content

There are several different approaches that you can use when it comes to capturing the interest of your readers. You can write from the perspective of vulnerability. This will show your readers that you are human, just like them. At the same time, you should always come up with a moral (or solution) to your story. This is the educational part for them. If you taught them something the first time that they read your content, the chances are great that they will keep learning from you. It is definitely worth their while to check it out each time. However you choose to present your content, it needs to touch them in some way and they need to feel that their lives have improved in some way because of it.

Conclusion

With the amount of information that is available online today, everyone must be choosy when it comes to deciding what to read (and write). You must write content that is valuable, engaging, and educational, and magnetic. Your content should never be about what you can gain personally. It should always be about how you can help the other person to benefit. Their needs are what come first. Remember that if they benefit, you will benefit as well.

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Traditional media has been around for a very long time. For a great while, there has been a need for it to embrace the social aspect of media in order to engage readers (also known as the audience).

Although the face of traditional media has changed a great deal in the last several years because of the social media revolution, it is absolutely necessary for it to get involved with people in other ways in order to remain successful. If that doesn’t happen, traditional media will not exist as we have know it up to this point. The differences between social media and traditional media are vast and although both should exist side by side for the most effective outcome. The more the readers are engaged (and in as many different ways as possible), the stronger and more successful the outcome.

The waning popularity of newspapers

There are many possible explanations as to why newspapers have declined in popularity to such an extent. One of the reasons may be websites such as Craigslist and  other online classified sites. The reason for this is that the online classified services offer revenue-producing services that newspapers used to offer to their readers. Another possible reason is that online news websites, such as Google News, have monopolized the market when it comes to news content. A possible third reason is advertising that is now transmitted through the Internet instead of in print. 

Slow recognition of reality

Traditional media were not quick to recognize the impact that social media was going to have and how it was going to affect people who worked with traditional media. Aside with the rapid dissemination of huge quantities of information, the vast majority of available online information doesn’t cost anything to obtain. That has an extremely strong appeal to a large number of people. The competition has just become too stiff. The reality is that it should no longer be an issue of one sort of media over the other. They need to find a way to work together for the most positive results. One of the results of the denial of the impact that social media has had is that it was assumed that because newspapers (and other forms of traditional media) would be here forever because they have been around for such a long time. It was taken for granted that traditional media was indispensible. As everyone knows, nobody (and nothing) is indispensible.

If the people who work with traditional media are to fix what is broken in their industries, there are several actions that must be taken:

• Transparency: If newspapers and other types of traditional media have any hope of being on the upswing again, they must be transparent to the public. They should inform the public of how they earn their money, how they spend their money, and the justification for what they spend their money on. Additionally, the transparency should include who the editors are, what their background is, and what is important to them.
   
• Get involved in the community: At the heart of social media is relationships. Traditional media is no different. With that in mind, relationships must be built and trust and credibility must be earned. The interactions should include discussions on what the people want to discuss and learn  about and how their problems can be solved.
   
• Be a part of the solution, not the problem: Content that is delivered through traditional media serves the same purpose as content that is delivered through social media. It is about solving the readers’ problems. No reader is concerned with how wonderful the traditional media specialists are. All they are concerned with is getting their problems solved.

Conclusion

Social media and traditional media can both succeed if, and only if, they work together. One is much less powerful without the other. However, together, they are truly a force to be reckoned with. There are so many different ways to combine the various types of media. People from both schools of thought need to be as open-minded and flexible as possible to survive. There is great value in the collaborative effort. There is certainly room for creativity when it comes to combining them and giving the public the best possible delivery of content, content that is informative, educational, helpful, and compelling.

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The way that people build exposure is very different than what used to be. Before the technical revolution, people would meet for coffee or lunch and get to know to each other. Now, they connect online. Their exposure is critical.

People are still having coffee; however, not necessarily together in person. The relationships that people are maintaining are still just as real as they have ever been. It is just that they are being maintained in a different way. When it comes to online exposure and connecting with other people through the Internet, you have the power to reach many more people at once and you can get your message to them effectively. Online communications have taken over where face-to-face communication used to be. It is; however, important to understand that online interactions and face-to-face interactions should work in tandem. One without the other doesn’t have the potency and won’t achieve the successful results unless they work together. This is the age of instant gratification. People want information and they want it now. Not only do people want it that way but they expect it and that is how they function comfortably.

The preferred news source

People need to be informed of what is going on in the world. In fact, some people are positively addicted to it. One of the main sources where people like to turn is the Internet for that type of information. Many people like to use several different sources for news and the Internet is definitely counted among those sources. Many, many people use the most popular search engines to get their news (such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to name a few) several times in any given week. The way in which the news is presented online is very convenient to readers also. The topics are clear and concise and the resources are easily identified. When news is presented online, there are usually links that lead to other interesting information.

Advertising and promotion

Advertising and promotion online has an array of possibilities. It is presented differently than it would be with traditional advertising; however, it is no less effective. If your promotional content is presented compellingly and properly, it will grab your readers and will entice them to continue to read whatever you are sharing with them. Even if your readers are not immediately led to your website, they can still have valuable content at their fingertips that will expose them to what you and your business represent and what you are offering.

Writing different types of content

If you write a blog article and you post and syndicate it, you don’t need to worry about how long it will be available to people who are searching for information within the confines of the topic about which you have written. The article will be available online for a very long time to come (months, and possibly even longer). The more information that originated with you online, the stronger your reputation and online exposure will be. 

Conclusion

It is obvious that the Internet is here to stay. People have gotten so comfortable with using technology and with interacting with one another online. It certainly is much more serious than a passing fad. As a business owner, it is important that you recognize the reality of the Internet for what it is. You must also recognize how important your online exposure is to your success. How you present yourself online will give your reputation unlimited power.  It is a powerful and really incredible tool that has the ability to help you and your business to become even more successful than you have been up to this point.

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Now that you are writing content and posting it on your chosen social media channels, your writing skills are bound to be improving. Even if you were a great writer before, social media can help you become even better.

When you write content for business, your approach to the language should be totally different than it is if you are posting content for personal use. The language that you use for business is much more formal than when you are sharing it with friends and family. The chances are great that the quality of your writing is a lot better now than when you first started writing and posting your content. The approach that you now take is much less selfish and focuses much more on other people. It is geared to reaching out to them and addressing their needs and wants. The following points may illustrate the differences that you see from your original writing to your writing style now:

• More “them” and less “you”: You now write a lot less about what you need and want and how wonderful you are. Instead, you gear your writing toward how you can help other people to solve their problems. In other words, you practice the marketing principle of “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
   
• Clear and concise: Your writing used to be verbose and unending. Now, you write clearly and concisely. You choose your words very carefully, knowing that your readers don’t have the time or the patience to read encyclopedias. At the same time, you want to give them something of value that they can benefit from.
   
• No editing required: You no longer see the value in big words that are only used for the sake of appearing impressive. They serve no purpose for your readers (or, in turn, for you). Knowing (or hoping) that your content will be shared by others, the last thing that you want is for someone else to have to edit what you post in order to make it suitable to share with other people. If your content needs to be edited, people will not make the effort as frequently to share it as they would if all they had to do was push to button to send it to other people.
   
• Social media appropriateness: Writing content for social media is very different than writing content for any other medium. You are now able to effectively communicate your ideas in short and compelling ways. If you have a lot more that you feel you want to write on any given subject, you use a different forum (such as a blog or Ebook) to do so.
   
• No more writer’s block: You used to experience writer’s block quite frequently. Now that you have been writing for a while, your creative juices are flowing more easily than ever before. One of your biggest sources of inspiration can be what other people are writing. Ideas for your content can come from many different sources.
   
• Interactive discussions: You are involved with a lot of interactive discussions based on the content that you are posting and sharing. Those discussions (on many occasions) result in ideas for more content. People love to know that their needs are being met and that their interests are being satisfied. If you write on topics that other people tell you they would like to read about, you will be building strong relationships and they will eventually become loyal customers of yours.
   
• Write everyday: The more you write, the better your writing skills will be. If you make it a point of writing something every single day, you will find that the effort will pay off for you. By writing everyday, you are forcing yourself to evaluate your work carefully and really hone your skills, including identifying both your strong and weak points.

Conclusion

As important as it is to be persistent and consistent when it comes to your writing online, it is also important to make sure that you manage your time effectively when it comes to your involvement in social media. You should make a commitment for a certain, finite amount of time and stick as closely to that as you possibly can. When you are not interacting (or doing other important, work-related, necessary things), you should continue to hone your writing skills. The more you write, the better a writer you will become. Other people are bound to appreciate the quality of your writing and you will be tremendously proud of what you have accomplished.

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You post content on a regular basis and you are sensitive to what you can and cannot appropriately post online. With that in mind, you should share your knowledge with others who are not as aware of what to do. 

Discretion and a refined approach

Some subjects and even the delivery of certain subjects are appropriate and acceptable when presented in certain ways and some have the potential of offending other people. Of course, first and foremost, always be polite. You should always try to understand how your words will be received. Sometimes, the inappropriate content is screamingly obvious and sometime it is more subtle and you need to sit and contemplate whether it is acceptable to share it with other people or not. The last thing that you want to do is offend others or violate some online etiquette rule (written or just commonly understood).

There is a common misconception that it is acceptable to post certain content through social media channels that is clearly not appropriate in any other medium. Well, it is actually not acceptable through social media channels either. Social media has given people the opportunity to hide behind what they regard as a protective shield. They feel that whatever they post is ok and that there will never be any repercussions from that sort of communication. It isn’t that the people who are posting such content are bad people who have no idea how to distinguish right from wrong. The issue is that the same social skills and finesse that apply to face-to-face interactions don’t necessarily apply in the same way to online interactions. The behavior is still being honed for online interactions and it may take a while longer until the behavior has been refined to its final version.

Social media unfortunately doesn’t come with an established set of written rules so the code of behavior is still being established. Because of the nature of social media and the way in which members of social networking communities interact and behave online, the relationships that the people share are bound to be different than face-to-face interactions are and the way in which people relate to each other in person is different than the way that they relate to each other online.

The age of communication

The age of communication is upon us and the young people of today (Generation Z—people born from the mid-1990s until now) must be educated and nurtured in an age when communication is very different than it ever was in the past. For older generations of people, behavior when it comes to socializing online isn’t difficult and a great deal of the behavioral decisions are driven by common sense. When it comes to online privacy settings for friends, family members, and colleagues, it is simple to know what and what not to share with certain people. The broad rule is that every piece of content with which you have a connection should be socially acceptable and there should be nothing in there that could hurt you in any way. With the younger generations, don’t assume that they will automatically understand what is and isn’t totally appropriate.

The way in which younger people communicate seems inappropriate at times (at best) and crass or even damaging (at worst). The problem with that type of communication is that it goes beyond the person who is actually doing the communicating and is considered a reflection on other people who are associated with that person (parents, friends, etc).

The reality of perception

We all create perceptions of ourselves (consciously or subconsciously) and whether those perceptions are true or not, they are definitely someone’s reality. Although there is an expectation that teenagers are still learning how to behave on their journey to maturity, it is important to teach them what is acceptable and what is not acceptable online and creating a negative perception may have long-lasting effects that they really shouldn’t have to be faced with.

Conclusion

Whether a code of ethics and etiquette is written down or merely understood, it is just as real. Everyone online has to play by the same rules and the education is a critical part of the success of online communications. The fact is that social media, social networking, and online interactions are here to stay. Everyone just needs to make sure that their approach to online communication is done in the best way possible and in a way that is never offensive or insulting. If you treat people politely and respectfully, they will react positively to you and will react favorably to what you are saying. Remember, you really do catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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