Social Media Etiquettes: Breakdown of 7 Dos and Don’ts

Social media is already a new communication landscape, yet the rules of the road are not fundamentally intuitive. Spamming, oversharing, or foul language on these platforms can destabilise brand image, no matter how successful or novice-like a brand is.
Though we are aware of these social media etiquettes, yet sometimes fail to follow and fall into a jeopardy situation for our brand. Personal as well as professional accounts should follow these spoken and unspoken rules in any online conversation.
Poor social media etiquette leaves you in an embarrassing situation on a personal level. For the business front, it could have a negative impact on your brand reputation. If your brand has any social media presence, these social media etiquettes tips will help you.
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Importance of social media etiquettes
We can see the increase in the internet population is astonishing. According to Pew Research Center, 74% of adults are present on social media platforms. And also shows that 73% of companies have inadequate social media norms, and that’s a concern. A minor mistake on the digital platforms may cost you a lot and result in breaking the business.
The importance of social media etiquette from a brand perspective is focused on brand building. Defined social media etiquette would help your brand in numerous ways; let’s start with them first.
- Protect Brand Image: Social media etiquette makes sure to portray your brand’s professional and respectable online image from a business perspective.
- Protection against Security and Legal Issues: You will be on the right side of the regulations if your industry follows strict privacy and compliance laws.
- Safeguard Privacy Risks: Social media etiquette follows what should be shared or what should not. And, this would help restrain violations for your brand and other potential information too.
- Strengthen Employees: Once your employees know the best practices to share content safely, they can showcase and recommend your organization for effective brand advocacy.
Social media etiquettes: 7 dos and don’ts
1. Learn basic user practices for each social media platform
Across many social media channels, maximum social media etiquette principles are almost similar. However, you should be aware of the best practices of each platform individually.
- On Facebook, make sure to respond to all mentions; you can follow Pareto 80/20 principle – 80% entertainment/engagement and 20% selling.
- Simply share valuable content on Twitter that will make your followers Retweet it organically. Also, avoid using Twitter character count when y Instagram should be approached differently, as avoid asking users to follow you using Hashtags like #TagsforLikes. And, always make sure not to overpopulate feeds.
- On LinkedIn, have a good understanding of when and to whom you should send the connection request.
2. Avoid overdo brand promotion
People do follow you on your social media to know more about your services and products. But, they might ‘Unfollow’ you for the excessive share of promotional content and advertisements. Here, the right mix of humor and promotional content could enhance customer engagement.
Best film of the year 🙌#Oscars pic.twitter.com/rcXvuE1J0W
— zomato (@zomato) March 5, 2018
In the above Twitter post, Zomato has smartly used humor for promoting the brand’s offerings. It successfully engaged the audience as it has used the right mix of humor and promotional content. No surprises, it works for Zomato as they have a whopping 1.5M followers on Twitter to spread the word.
3. Monitor and measure posts performance
Brands and social media marketers are familiar with the content strategy of the scheduled posts to avoid last-minute frantic posting risks. However, they usually fail to check the people’s reactions, mentions, and performance. It comes under the don’ts of social media etiquette practices.
Locobuzz’ Social Media Monitoring can help you in tracking every single conversation in real-time. You will come to know the insights of your influencer, topic, customer location, gender, sentiment, priority, and much more. The understanding will help you to prepare a full-fledged plan to strategize your social media content.

4. Use of hashtags
Hashtags reflect your brand voice and brand presence in the specific target audience groups. Hashtags should be used smartly and to the optimum. Excessive use of hashtags on any post may look messy and doesn’t give an appealing look. Good social media etiquette says to use relevant hashtags for your post, but don’t overdo it. The use of branded hashtags widens your brand awareness on social media channels. This enables cross-channel tagging for brands and pushes user-generated content, as Nike’s #jusdoit delivers.

5. Polite responses and avoid arguments
Brands should master the art of responding on social media platforms. It is better to not be part of an argument, especially in negative sentiments and rude mentions. Most importantly, your response should match the situation and your brand voice. Brands should respond publicly, yet if the conversation starts heating up, then make efforts to move the conversation in private DMs or customer support email team.
Along with this, find out the reasons for negative sentiments by constant communication with your customers. Locobuzz provides comprehensive Social Media Listening and Monitoring capabilities for brands to fetch sentiments across social media platforms and give real-time customer insights.

Here, Sainsbury maintained a continuous interaction without showing any adverse reaction.
6. Connection with your audience
Many brands understand the importance of forming a strong bond with the target audience and growing the customer base. Some brands practice connecting with the audience in an inauthentic way.
In order to get connected with the audience, a consistent engagement is a must. For this, post frequent content and listen & respond to them with your true brand voice. Brand collaboration with influencers and brand advocacy by employees form a more authentic connection with followers and target audience.
Some brands become desperate to go beyond organic engagement; this should be avoided else your brand image and presence might experience some adverse impacts.
In this example, Master Card mentioned empathetic employee posts for brand advocacy that organically attract more connections.

7. Healthy relation with competitors
Social media is a battleground for a healthy relationship with your competitors. Brands should avoid bad-mouthing about competitors just to gain some initial traction. A healthy relationship with your competitors creates a friendly image among your audience. The rude way is neither welcomed by the competitors nor by the consumers. Instead, it would hurt your own brand reputation compared to some traction. A recent Twitter post of food delivery aggregator Swiggy showcases the way brands should interact on social media by wishing competitor Zomato open heartily.

Wrapping up
Knowing the poor etiquette on social media that can ruin your brand image is a good start for brands that focus on building a good brand reputation. These ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ will help brands pay attention while using social media for their businesses. If you’re searching for a solution to improve your brand reputation and engagement, then Locobuzz is the perfect destination.