Archive for Social Networking
1. Cursing – Whether you choose to use profanity in your regular every day life or not is up to you but it is not professional nor appropriate for the work place and your profile is your online work place if you work online. Those who you are trying to get to know better may be offended by foul language. The may get the wrong image of you just because of the way they see you speak online. People judge by what they can see.
2. Spamming – There are not many people who appreciate being approached in their in-boxes to either join a business under or to purchase something from someone they hardly know. Take the time to get to know others. They may decide to come to you about your opportunity or sale.
Spamming someone in their in-box is the equivalent of an unwanted telemarketer, calling you while you are trying to have dinner with your family, asking you to whip out your credit card and purchase something. It is annoying and many times the opportunity is not looked at simply because you did not go the right way about it.
3. Drama – No one really cares to see you and your buddies going to war with another online friend or the public bashing of a neighbor or family member. It is not our business and very unprofessional. Many times these sort of wars are one-sided because the other party does not get to tell their side. Is that really fair? How does that look to onlookers?
Handle your problems discretely and privately if you do feel the need to talk to someone about it. Even if someone does legitimately offend you, everyone on your friend list does not have to know about it. Do not become known as the drama queen or king within your circle of online friends. There are plenty of soap operas available if someone wants to see who is stabbing who in the back today. Keep the drama off of your profile.
4. Lack of participation – If you have only logged into a social site five times for the whole year and every time you do it is only to share your opportunity or spam someone in their in-box, do not be surprised when others decide to delete you. People have to feel you care and if you never participate on a site people will forget about you because you are not interesting to them. Do not be afraid to jump right in and participate.
5. Scamming – If you offer promotions, contests, sales, advertising, giveaways, gifts or extras with purchases, it would be in your best interests to follow through. People remember when you scam and will tell their closest friends or sometimes as many people as they can reach not to deal with you. I have seen it happen on a few social sites. Word of mouth can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Be truthful and don’t offer more than you can reasonably give or do.
6. Trouble making – No one likes a person who sits around just waiting to argue with and use sarcasm on online friend whenever they feel like picking on someone. This type of person strikes for no reason and without warning. There is a right and wrong way to disagree on something and you feel a certain topic makes you want to go to war figuratively then maybe you should not comment on that particular topic. If an online friend annoys you with their views on politics, business, religion or anything remember it is their views and they have the right and free will to think whatever they choose. You do not have to agree with them but you should respect them and if you can not then you need to unfriend them and move on. It is very hard to take something bad once you have said it and others have seen it.
7. Excessive copying – You may see something that gives you an idea but you should make it your own, it should never be an exact clone of something someone else is doing. I see this mainly with online boutique type store owners. One person will have a nice site and someone comes along and not only takes their whole idea but also copies word for word what they have written, target the original boutique owners customers with sales and steals their photos too. Some of the time these are photos that someone personally took of their family or friends modeling their product. Not only is this unethical behavior a great way to get unfriended but also a great way for word of mouth to become your worst enemy. No one wants to deal with a fraud.
8. Stealing – Taking someones photographs without permission is stealing. Whether they purchased the photo or shot with their camera it is theirs. You found it on their site and you do not have the right to use it without their permission. Taking someone else’s articles or blog posts is also stealing. If you did not write it and do not have the private label rights to say you did then it is not advisable to do so. Come up with your own material or purchase from a ghost writer or private label rights site but stealing is never the answer and how can you really explain why you took it. Some people are willing to let you use material if you credit them as the writer which they deserve since they put all the hard work into creating the material.
9. Excessive game and application invites – Simply put everyone does not want to join your mafia, help you with vampires, send plants for your farm, join your jewelry or card game or put hearts on your profile. Everyone is not a gamer. Some do not like applications and get annoyed when they are sent. While some may like this others may be turned off. If you keep inviting someone to join a game and you notice they never do, take it as a hint. Be observant. If an online friends profile is mostly business and you do not see them posting about games there is a good chance they are not interested.
10. Scroll posting – If you have ever seen a word scroll on a website then you know it is never-ending. As long as the page is up those particular words scroll across the page. Are your status updates like that on a social network? Are your online friends left wondering when will it end? Are they happy when you log off?
Do you really need to post about your opportunity 15-25 times in one hour? Some people look at that like spamming and get tired of seeing the same thing over and over. Every status of the day does not need to be about your business. Share a great article you have read, a little tidbit about your life, a recipe or something else of interest. You may find you have more in common with some of your online friends then you thought.
To Your Success,
Alice Coaxum
When someone visits your profile do they get the sense that you are a real person? Do you seem like someone they would like to get to know better?
How you fill out your profile can make or break you on a networking site. If you have no information except for a link to your opportunity, how likely do you think it will be that others will click on it and check out what you have to offer?
Not very likely.
What reason are you giving them to be interested in you? Why should they bother to look at your profile again or contact you?
Who are you? If you do not know and share who you are then we do not know either.
Do you feel like you are always being ignored and over looked?
Could your sparse profile be the reason? Could it be that others are turned off by your lack of a photo because the only thing they see is whatever profile photo the site owner has picked to represent those who do not add a photo.
Your smiling face can do much more than a blank photo or standard site photo. It can attract someone to you. It can show someone you are real.
Could it be that your writing is really hard to understand because of improper sentence structure, slang and misspellings?
If you are bad at spelling use a spell checker so people can easily understand what you are saying. If you are not good expressing yourself ask someone who is to help you out or take a look at other profiles so you can get the sense of how to fill your profile out.
Save the slang talk for your friends. Some might not understand what you mean.
When you fill out a profile do you try your best to fill the whole thing out or do you only fill in the spot about your business and ramble on and on about the company.
What does that tell us about you? Nothing. Most likely we can find all that information on your company issued website.
Why should we take a chance with you and trust you when you have given us nothing to connect to?
Why should we buy from you when there are other representatives, consultants or similar businesses that will allow us to get to know and build trust with them?
Give us a reason to refer you to another person?
People can not get to know what you do not share and will move on to the next profile. Network marketing is all about teaching, learning, sharing and making connections.
People want to know you. They want to connect with you so they can build trust with you. Trust is something that is earned and not a right.
Next time you fill out a profile take the time to properly present yourself. Keep it real and interesting so other people will want to connect with you and get to know you better.
When someone takes the time to read your profile they are looking to learn something about you, so let them.
To Your Success,
Alice Coaxum
