A piece on Forbes.com titled Are You Practicing Proper Social Networking Etiquette? suggests

“creating rules to cope with the ever-expanding reach of modern communications has just begun, but will be shaped largely by individuals and organizations, not top-down decrees from a digital Emily Post.” (italics mine)

The article goes on to ask, “(is) it wise to accept a colleague or higher-up as a ‘friend’” on a social network?. While some of these questions have been brought on by new methods of communications, others are just plain common sense, and do not need to be thought of in the context of social networking.

This question in the previous paragraph involves both social networking issues and pre-Web 2.0 business etiquette. To answer it, I would consider a number of things:

• Does your company expect you to be available for extended hours? Seriously, the Blackberry was introduced in 1999, so the notion that prior to Facebook your boss was unable to reach you after-hours is a little naive.
• Do you use your account primarily for professional reasons or personal reasons, or has the line disappeared for you?
• Is this person also an actual friend, or just a colleague?

Ten years ago you could have asked these same questions about e-mail, wondering, “Should I give my personal e-mail address to my boss?” for example.

The key for determining social network etiquette is to start by forgetting the social network itself. It’s just a layer of abstraction that makes the question appear new and mysterious. Once you set aside the technology and examine the human interactions behind any question of etiquette, the answers will generally become apparent.

Tags: Forbes, Social Network, Etiquette

My latest Talent Zoo Column looks at Facebook Fan Pages and how to make the most of them. Here’s an excerpt:

Several people have told me recently they don’t think their Facebook pages have as many fans as their brand seems to call for. They asked me what they were doing “wrong” and how to improve their pages. One executive compared the “coolness” of his brand to a larger, boring brand that drew many more fans to its Facebook page, and said, “I don’t get it.”

I think one of the issues here is the inflation of language so pervasive in social networking. There’s a big difference between a real fan (short for fanatic) of your company, and someone who decides to “Become a Fan,” which takes the single click of a mouse and may never again involve engagement between the “fan” and the company.

Still, big business is creating fan pages and a study released in January 2009, commissioned by Princeton, N.J.-based interactive marketer Rosetta, found that 59% of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart, are using Facebook. In fact, when I made informal inquiries into what companies had the best Facebook pages, large retail brands were most often cited. Victoria’s Secret’s Pink and Whole Foods were both mentioned.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Tags: Facebook, Fan Pages

What if the preferences for your favorite social network allowed you to pick one or more “blackout days” during which you could not log on? Could you get by for a full 24 hours, or more, with no access to Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or any of your other favorite social media tools? (And you can’t cheat and use TweetDeck to access Twitter. The API would be shut down, too.)

Recently I’ve had a handful of big projects and some “real world” interruptions and have been spending very little time online. And I don’t miss it all that much.

I’ve always tried not to be overly consumed by anything electronic. In the acknowledgments to my book, I quote my eight-year-old daughter who told me, when I first started bringing my iPhone into the dining room, “Dad, no electronic devices at the dinner table.”

And seven years ago I got fed up with TV and canceled cable. I have never seen American Idol, Lost, CSI, 24, America’s Next Top Model, etc. and I feel no sense of loss.

I’ve been wondering, what would happen if I just quit social networking altogether? How adversely would it affect the quality of my life and relationships?

Maybe quitting completely is too extreme, so that gave me the idea for the social network blackout day(s) feature. If Twitter or Facebook had the ability to shut you out for one or more days, would you enable it? For how many days? Or is your social networking such an important part of your life that the very suggestion seems wrong?

Tags: Social networking, blackout days, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed

I am writing a piece on Social Network migration for my May Talent Zoo column. I have some ideas on why people leave a certain social network, or what drives them to join a new one, such as:

• Learning about a new social network from a trusted expert, like a blogger with experience in social networking
• Migration of a peer group, formal or informal to a new network, such as all of the employees of a certain company or a circle of friends
• Persuasion by a single influential (or very insistent) friend

I’ve created a brief quiz (just four questions) to try to get some idea of what motivates people to join or leave social networks.

I hope you’ll take a moment to complete the quiz, and please leave your comments below, as detailed as you wish, on the question, so well stated by the Clash, “Should I stay or should I go?”

I was quoted in today’s Launch magazine in Do’s and Don’ts of Using Social Internet Sites for Business. In the article, I offer the following advice on adding and interacting with contacts on various social networks:

“Don’t forget your manners.

While nearly all social networks have rules for participation (don’t post obscenities or copyrighted material, for example), the etiquette for adding people to each network is defined by the mores of those on the network, Postman says. He offers a few guidelines:

• Users should be particularly careful to avoid the appearance of flirtation and inappropriate comments and messages. Use the same rules as you would in the workplace.
• Don’t send blatantly commercial messages. Business networking is OK. Shameless promotion and cold calling is not.
• If the network allows, give the person you are inviting some context for the invitation.
• Do not take it badly if someone declines or ignores your invitation to connect. That’s their option.”

The full article can be found here.

Tags: Launch, Grow Utah Ventures, social network etiquette, Facebook, Twitter