Nowadays, social networks are part of our lives, both personally and professionally. And even if we use them behind a screen, it is necessary to use them in a correct and polite way, just like in the “real” interactions.

Netiquette: what is it?

Here’s the netiquette, a neologism that combines the English word “network” and the French one “étiquette” (good manners). It designates a set of professional and social good manners used in electronic communication over any computer network (social networks , forums, blogs, or emailing). Sometimes these rules are written in a separate section of the website/blog/social, but most of the times they are unspoken.

So everyone should know these rules, especially social media managers. In fact, the online reputation is crucial nowadays and it is acquired mostly through careful, helpful and interesting behaviour.

More in detail, we will now consider two famous social networks – Facebook and Twitter – and we’ll give you some netiquette tips for them. Please remember that these are recommendations mostly for corporate or professional accounts, because the management of personal profiles has other needs and rules.

Facebook

First, if you want to be present with your company or professional status on this social media you need to create a fan page, not a profile. In fact, since the beginning Facebook has been clear: organizations must use the pages, individuals must use profiles instead. So be careful!

Be interesting: besides making a proper promotion of your business, share interesting articles which could be somehow tied to your own situation. Users will also appreciate this more “informative” feature and this could also help the involvement of the public.

Always interact and respond to compliments, criticisms or simple questions.

Put in the page all the necessary information for the public: a brief description of the business, links to the website, telephone or email contacts.

If necessary, write the rules of your netiquette in a specific post (which will be highlighted) or between the notes.

For more tips on how to use Facebook, we refer to this our article.

Twitter

Use the hashtag (#) in a targeted, effective and synthetic way. Too many confused hashtags will make unpleasant reading the tweet (which must be a maximum of 14o characters).

Follow interesting organizations or people and dialogue politely with them.

Do not ask for retweets (ie sharing the tweet): yes, the reetweet is a form of advertising, but if it is not done spontaneously perhaps you’re doing something wrong.

If there’s a tweet that you like, it’s better to use both the reetweet that the star (ie the “Add to Favorites“). In fact only the star is not enough: it might seem similar to the Facebook “thumbs up”, but in reality it does not create interaction and it brings no benefits to those who wrote the original tweet.

General rules

For every online context, it would be a good idea to cite the source from which you take a piece of news, thanking for the contribution.

Write well: it may seem superfluous, but just a small mistake could compromise the perception that others have of us.

Use the right tone: in general on social networks the tone is informal, so be friendly and open (but not too much, you have to find the right balance).

Finally, as a general rule: what you write on the web remains. As always, the key is common sense.