Every society has its rules. Every group within society has its own subset of rules.
While it would be wonderful if all these rules were written down somewhere, the reality is that they aren’t.
So how can you learn about them?
Observation.
Watch what others are doing and learn. Learn from the good examples (and from the silly mistakes).
If you “dive in” you can easily upset other members of the community, so they’ll be less likely to want to listen to you.
If, on the other hand, you hang around a bit and watch how people interact within the community you’ll have a much better chance of success.
Watch, listen, learn.
And if you’re still not sure .. watch, listen and learn some more.
If you were building a house you’d expect it to have solid foundations. Why should your online interactions be any different?
The thing is that what are other peoples ‘rules’ may not be everyone’s ‘rules’.
In my experience that get 100 people in a room talking about what they suggest or guide people to do in the area of social media and you’ll get 101 answers.
We have to also take into account the audience we are trying to reach.
Yes there is best practice – and yes it’s easy for those of us who have been using social media platforms for a while to have ‘preferences’.
As you say – the ‘observe’ – watch, listen, adapt to your audience and then start applying and learning.
Krishna De – that’s why I suggested observation first 🙂) is that a lot of them dive straight in, annoy / upset the members of the community (could be a forum or mailing list -doesn’t really matter) and either get banned or flamed. If they took the time to observe the interactions first they’d be less likely to make those mistakes
The main problems I see with people attempting stuff online (and this goes back to long before all this web 2.0, social media,
Popped in to check out the site from Krishna’s article today. Top drawer stuff and common sense really – I often wonder why people loose their rational thinking when something new comes along. I guess it is just novelty, not wanting to be left behind, afraid of missing out on something the next guy is going to win at….. all the usual stuff!! Great site and from someone who is in the immersion phase of the role of social media into the intergrated mar comms mix I am still learning and have a warning sign when I discuss this with business to keep their feet firmly on the ground when considering this. It is a new tool to work with all our other comms tools when the relevant message is crafted for the target market it is then that the relevant comms tools are considered. Looking forward to your future insight to guide us through the social media waters. Sharon