Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by egravityinfo in Market news
For those who don’t understand or see the value of social media websites, let’s take a look at the benefits of creating viral content and effectively promoting them through social media channels.
Developing link baits and successfully getting it popular on various social media websites like Digg and StumbleUpon will lead to multiple benefits for any website:
- Primary and Secondary Traffic. Primary traffic is the large amount of visitors who come directly from social media websites. Secondary traffic is referral traffic from websites which link to and send you visitors, after they come across your content through the social sites.
- High Quality Links. Becoming popular on social news websites like Digg or Reddit will get you a large number of links, some of which may be topically relevant, some not. A good story can realistically acquire a large number of high quality editorial links, most of which cannot be easily bought.
Now let’s translate this into tangible benefits for your website:
1. Links = Better Search Engine Rankings.
When a website receives a large number of natural, permanent links from trusted domains, it develops authority. Search engines trust it. If you optimize your linkbait and website structure properly, you can easily start ranking for competitive keywords, which will in turn bring in search engine visitors.
Do this often enough and your search traffic will undoubtedly increase. In a sense, you are obtaining these quality links through borrowed trust. Many bloggers and webmaster still think that if an article is on the Digg or del.icio.us homepage, then it’s probably worth checking out and referencing through a citation link.
A new website may find it difficult to gain links from a critical mass that is not familiar with it but a trusted social news resource makes it easier for links to come in, because the community and buzz has somewhat ‘certified‘ the value of the site. Note that the actual strength of the article is still of utmost importance for all.
2. Primary + Secondary Traffic = Community/Supporters.
Some people claim that social news websites only send useless traffic, visitors that will often just view a specific webpage and click away. Yes, that’s usually the case. Sites like Digg are notorious for their poor bounce rates: many visitors drop in for the article and then leave after reading it. StumbleUpon is much better in this aspect.
But don’t mistake this with a lack of interest. Your subscriber figures will often take big jump up and then stabilize after a few days. If your entire site is relevant to the general interests of the social media website, there will always be a handful of social users who will start to track your site in order to submit future content.
Detractors also ignore the power of ultra targeted secondary traffic. General sites or blogs in the same niche will link to a story that’s popular on social sites, because it adds value for their readers or users. This is done naturally on a daily basis for many.
While primary traffic usually comes in a larger volume, I would argue that secondary traffic is more valuable. Why? Because links from other websites bring visitors who are very likely to be interested in your content. These citation links demonstrate recognition of your site in the eyes of others. It builds your brand.
Think of the social news site as a platform or a soapbox. As something that gives you a chance to be heard or read, even for a brief moment of a few hours. The people who are drawn to your message will visit your site and recommend it to others
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by egravityinfo in Market news
Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.
If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.
Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.
According to Wikipedia, Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees).
Social media marketing has three important aspects:[
- Creating buzz or news worthy events, videos, tweets, or even blog entries that attract attention, and become viral in nature. Buzz is the piece that makes social media marketing work. It replicates a message, not through purchase of an ad, but through user to user contact. The message does not necessarily have to be about the product; many successful viral campaigns have gathered steam through something funny or interesting, with the company logo or tagline included.
- Building ways that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues. Fan pages in Twitter, MySpace of Facebook are exactly this.
- It is conversational. Social media marketing is not fully controlled by the organization, it allows for user participation and dialogue. Potentially a badly designed social media marketing campaign can backfire on the organization that created it. That is the reason that SMM campaigns must fully engage and respect the users.
According to Lloyd Salmons, first chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau social media council “Social media isn’t just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.”.
The parameters surrounding social media marketing are arguably elusive today; however a growing consensus suggests social media marketing and Social Media are here to stay. Nielsen published a report suggesting that blogs and social networks make up the emerging social web. The social web includes social media sites and it is a location within which social media marketing takes place.
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by egravityinfo in Market news
1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I’m very rich. Marry me”. That’s Direct marketing
2. You are at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and point at you and say: “He’s very rich. Marry him!”. That’s Advertising.
3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: “Hi, I’m very rich. Marry me!”. That’s Telemarketing.
4. You are at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, you pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: “By the way, I’m rich. Will you marry me?”. That’s Public relations.
5. You are at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to her and says: “You are very rich. Can you marry me?” That’s Brand Recognition.
6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I’m very rich. Marry me”. She gives you a nice hard slap on your face. That’s Customer Feedback.
7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I’m very rich. Marry me”. And she introduces you to her husband. That’s demand and supply gap.
8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: “I’m rich. Will you marry me?”. That’s competition eating into your market share.
9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say “I’m rich. Marry me!”, your wife arrives. That’s the restriction for entering new market.
10. You’re at a party and you see a gorgeous girl. You do your best party trick, bring drinks for everyone, laugh at her jokes, then leave. She asks her friend “Who was that?” she replies, “That guy is rich.” The gorgeous girl then looks you up on Facebook and asks you to marry her. - *That’s social media marketing
Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by egravityinfo in Market news
Everyday I receive an email from somebody about how their account was hacked, how a friend tagged them in the photo and they want a way to avoid it, as well as a number of other complications related to their privacy on Facebook. Over the weekend one individual contacted me to let me know that he would be removing me as a friend from Facebook because he was “going to make a shift with my Facebook use - going to just mostly family stuff.”
Perhaps he was tired of receiving my status updates or perhaps he didn’t want me to view photos from his personal life. Whatever the reason for ending our Facebook friendship, I figured that many people would benefit from a thorough overview on how to protect your privacy on Facebook. Below is a step by step process for protecting your privacy.
1. Use Your Friend Lists
I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”
There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:
- You can add each friend to more than one friend group
- Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
- Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
I’ll touch on each of the things listed above in more detail later. A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos.
Using friend lists is also extremely useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. For instance I have about 20 friend lists and I categorize people by city (New York, San Francisco, D.C., Tel Aviv, etc), where I met them (conferences, past co-workers, through this blog), and my relationship with them (professional, family, social, etc).
You can configure your friend lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.
2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
My mom is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my mom doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.
How to Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
Now that you’ve decided that you would like to remove yourself from Facebook’s search results, here’s how to do it:
- Visit your search privacy settings page
- Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
- Click “Save Changes”
By default, Facebook makes your presence visible to the network you are in. Frequently, people aren’t aware of their visibility, so this is one of the first settings that users wish to modify. By selecting “Customize” from the search visibility drop down you can make your settings even more granular.
3. Remove Yourself From Google
Facebook gets A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. Currently the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, a link to add you as a friend, a link to send you a message, and a list of up to approximately 20 fan pages that you are a member of.
For some people, being displayed in the search engines is a great way to let people get in contact with you, especially if you don’t have an existing website. Facebook also tends to rank high in the search results, so if you want to be easy to find, making your search profile can be a great idea. Many people don’t want any of their information to be public though.
By visiting the same search privacy settings page listed in the previous step, you can control the visibility of your public search listing which is visible to Google and other search engines. You can turn off your public search listing by simply unchecking the box next to the phrase “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing” as pictured in the image below.
4. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake
This is the classic Facebook problem. You let loose for a few hours one night (or day) and photos (or videos) of the moment are suddenly posted for all to view, not just your close friends who shared the moment with you. The result can be devastating. Some have been fired from work after incriminating photos/videos were posted for the boss to see. For others, randomly tagged photos/videos have ended relationships.
At the least, a tagged photo/video can result in personal embarrassment. So how do you prevent the infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds? It’s pretty simple. First visit your profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.
Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.
5. Protect Your Albums
Just because you’ve uploaded photos doesn’t mean that you’ve accurately tagged every photo correctly. This setting is more of a reminder than anything else. Frequently people will turn of their tagged photo visibility to certain friend lists yet keep their photo albums public to the world. If you are trying to make all your photos invisible you must do so on an album by album basis.
There is a specific Photos Privacy page from which you can manually configure the visibility of each album (as pictured below). This is an extremely useful configuration option and I highly recommend that you take advantage of it. This way you can store your photos indefinitely on Facebook yet ensure that the only people that can view your photos are the ones who you really want to see them.
6. Prevent Stories From Showing Up in Your Friends’ News Feeds
Oh, did you really just break up with your girlfriend? I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure all of your friends and business contacts are also sorry to hear that. I can’t tell you how many awkward relationship status changes I’ve seen. The most regular one I’ve seen recently is when an attractive female ends their relationship and numerous guys hop on the opportunity to console her.
I’ve also seen the end of marriages, as well as weekly relationship status changes as individuals try to determine where their relationship stands with their significant other. My personal policy is to not display a relationship status, but many like to make a public statement out of their relationship. For those individuals, it can be a smart move to hedge against future disasters.
There are a number of ways to control how your relationship status is displayed. The first thing that most people should do is uncheck the box next to “Remove Relationship Status” in the News Feed and Wall Privacy page. In the rare instance that a relationship does uncomfortably end, you can avoid making things more uncomfortable by avoiding a friend notification about it.
Second, your relationship status falls within your “Basic Information” section of your profile. You can control who can see your basic information next to the “Basic Information” setting on the Profile Privacy page. Keep in mind that other relevant profile information like your gender, birth date, networks, and other settings are visible within your basic information section.
Making your basic information completely invisible to friends probably isn’t a good idea, but removing the news feed stories about relationship changes most likely is.
7. Protect Against Published Application Stories
This one is a little more tricky to manage but I’ll explain the issue at hand. Frequently when you add an application, a news feed item is immediately published to your profile. One way to get instantly embarrassed is to visit the “Have Sex!” application (found here). This application has no purpose besides telling your friends that you are interested in having sex with them. Without taking any action, the application will post a news feed story to your profile which says the equivalent of “Nick just published to the world that he is having sex!”
This is surely something that none of your professional contacts if any of your contacts are interested in seeing (honestly I’m a bit confused about that application, but that’s a different story). That’s why it’s important to monitor what takes place after you install an application on Facebook. Once you install an application you should visit your profile to ensure that no embarrassing notification has been posted to your profile.
More often then not, nothing will be posted but there are many applications on the platform unfortunately that publish stories without you knowing it. There are two ways to avoid having this happen: don’t visit applications or scan your profile every time that you do. Ultimately you shouldn’t be concerned about applications that you’ve built a trusted relationship with but any new applications could potentially post embarrassing notifications.
8. Make Your Contact Information Private
I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. One of the first things I did when I started approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built a strong relationship with, was make my contact information visible only to close contacts.
The contact information is my personal email and phone number. It’s a simple thing to set but many people forget to do it. Frequently people we don’t know end up contacting us and we have no idea how they got our contact information. Your contact privacy can be edited right from your profile. If you have chosen to enter this information, you should see a “Contact Information” area under the “Info” tab in your profile.
If it displays, you simply click “Edit” and then a screen like the one pictured below will show up.
For each contact item that you have in your profile you should set custom privacy settings (as pictured below) so that contacts that you aren’t close to don’t have access to your phone number and/or email. It’s a small change but it can save you the hassle of being pestered by people you don’t know well. Also, protecting your privacy is generally a good practice to get in the habit of doing.
As a side note, this is a great area to take advantage of friend lists. By getting in the habit of grouping your friends, you can ensure that you are navigating Facebook safely through privacy settings that are attached to your friend lists.
9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts
Just because you use Facebook for business doesn’t mean your friends do. That’s why once in a while a friend of yours will come post something embarrassing or not necessarily “work friendly” and it can end up having adverse effects. That’s why Facebook has provided you with the ability to customize your wall postings visibility. You can also control which friends can post on your wall. There are two places you can control these things.
Adjust Wall Posting Visibility
Within your profile page you can control who can view wall postings made by your friends. To do so, click on the “Settings” icon on the wall in your profile page. Next, find the box pictured in the image above and adjust the setting which says “Who can see posts made by friends?” I’d suggest using a strategy similar to the one outlined in the previous step regarding contact information.
Control Who Can Post to Your Wall
In addition to controlling who can view wall postings published by your friends, you also want to control which friends can post on your wall. Not everybody needs to do this, but occasionally you simply want to prevent some people from posting on your page. If you visit the Profile Privacy settings page, there is a section labeled “Wall Posts”.
From this area you can completely disable your friends’ ability to post on your wall. You can also select specific friend lists that can post on your wall. Personally, I don’t really care who can post on my wall but I can understand the need to control who can see those wall postings. If you want to limit who can post wall posts on your profile, this is where you can do it.
10. Keep Your Friendships Private
While it’s fun to show off that you have hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook, some of your friends don’t want to live public lives. That’s why it’s often a good policy to turn off your friends’ visibility to others. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.
Whatever the reason they are doing it, just know that they are … it’s part of what makes Facebook so addictive: the voyeuristic nature. Also, your friends are frequently visible to the public through search engines and exposing this information can ultimately present a security risk. To modify the visibility of your friends, visit the Profile Privacy page.
Navigate down to the setting which says “Friends” and then modify the setting to whatever is right for you.
Conclusion
These are just ten ways that you can protect your privacy on Facebook. While there are a few other small things to keep in mind, these ten settings are most important. Keep in mind that while you may have turned off the visibility of many profile sections, there is no way to prevent all photos or videos from being visible if friends of yours make the images visible.
The best way to prevent embarrassing items from showing up on Facebook in the future is to not make bad judgements in your personal life. We’re all human though and being completely paranoid about every choice you make is probably not the best way to live your life. Be aware of what privacy settings are available and be conscious of what your friends may be publishing about you.
While you may not want to configure all of the privacy settings outlined, simply knowing how to do so is a great step in the right direction. By following the 10 settings listed above you are well on your way to an embarrassment free future on Facebook!
(All Facebook)
Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by egravityinfo in Market news
There are already more rules than you might think.
After a long day at the office, imagine logging onto Facebook to see what your friends have been up to, only to have your boss or colleague message you about an urgent work matter. Aside from the fact that you are officially off duty, is it appropriate for your coworker to reach out to you through a social networking forum? Was it wise to accept a colleague or higher-up as a “friend” to begin with? And–perhaps more importantly–in this day and age, when people are seemingly available around the clock because of smart phones and our endless appetite for all things online, is anyone ever really “off duty?”
As Facebook, Twitter and 24-hour BlackBerry access blur the lines between business and personal lives, managers and employees are struggling to develop new social norms to guide them through the ongoing evolution of communications technology. Wharton faculty and other experts say the process of creating rules to cope with the ever-expanding reach of modern communications has just begun, but will be shaped largely by individuals and
Generational differences in the approach to openness on the Internet will also be a factor in coming to common understandings of how and when it is appropriate to contact colleagues, superiors or clients.
“There are huge etiquette issues around the new social media, especially the interactive type,” says Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard. “What if your boss friends you on Facebook? That’s a dilemma. How do you not accept that friend? What if you really are friends?”
According to Rothbard, new communications technology is eroding the boundaries between home and office, which creates a “double-edged sword” for companies. “On the one hand, it enables flexibility. In some ways, it makes you more effective. But it can also lead to a lot of burnout. In the long term, it may lead to conflict about how you feel towards your other life roles and your ability to be fully present in any one domain.”
In Depth: 21 Top Twitter Tips For Business
For example, a BlackBerry can allow parents to attend their children’s soccer games while remaining in contact with colleagues at the office in case an emergency comes up. But, she adds, “you have your BlackBerry at your kid’s soccer game. That’s another … line you may be crossing.”
The explosion in the popularity of Facebook has made the site a key battleground in the struggle to establish consensus on correct social networking behavior. Rothbard notes that initially, many businesspeople attempted to use LinkedIn for business contacts, reserving Facebook for more personal interactions. Gradually, however, professional colleagues, clients and supervisors have now become “friends.”
Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics Andrea Matwyshyn had intended to keep her Facebook page strictly personal, but was forced to open it up when colleagues in Europe chose to use Facebook as a means for organizing a conference. Through that initial group of professional friends, other business contacts began to reach out to Matwyshyn on Facebook. “I felt social pressure to build out my social network, because at that point I had about three friends,” she says. “That’s how Facebook gets you.”
Multiple ‘Selves’
For most people who use Facebook and other social networking sites, says Wharton marketing professor Patricia Williams, “there is an understanding of the multiple roles we play. There is the self we are for our friends, a self for our family [and] a professional self. What’s interesting is the degree to which we are comfortable playing all of those ’selves’ at one time.” And that is something that people are not used to doing. Before the advent of such networks, it was unusual for someone to display a persona that would seem familiar to friends, coworkers and family–all at the same time.
“I’ve heard people say that Facebook is for personal friends and LinkedIn is for professional contacts,” Williams notes. “But many of my Facebook friends are my colleagues–people who work just down the hall–and I don’t have a problem with that. I do, however, have some discomfort being ‘Facebook friends’ with my students, because it gives them access to my personal self that’s not normally available to them.”
At the same time, Williams’ students, especially the undergraduates, have not yet developed a sense of their professional self. Consequently, she believes, they may be less cautious about the image they project on social networks, even when they may be visible to bosses, clients–or teachers.
Williams and a colleague, Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed II, are conducting research that examines the conflict between individuals’ various identities, “such as when my role as a professional comes into conflict with my role as a mother,” Williams says. In mixing up personal and professional roles, people can get themselves into embarrassing situations. “I think some people are good, and some people are not so good, at finding a balance in these roles” and keeping information that would be perceived as too personal out of a professional context.
Workplace conflicts have also come up at companies where managers have limited or banned Facebook for being a distraction and monitor employees’ personal pages for images or comments that might reflect poorly on the business. At the same time, Matwyshyn says some companies require employees to maintain blogs or to Twitter as a way to market the firm. Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ), she notes, encourages social networking on the job. “It all depends on how people use the social media. For some people, Twitter feeds can be a great business outreach mechanism, and so posting items to Twitter may be considered by some companies or individuals to be part of their job.” Social networking can help personalize or humanize a business culture, and many companies have their own Facebook page, she adds.
Generational Approaches
Communications researchers, and the companies that look to them for advice, have a lot to learn about how or if employers should control or encourage their employees’ use of social networks, according to Williams. Certainly, employees who are talking about their workplace on Facebook could be considered to be “exposing the brand,” which can be good or bad, depending on what aspect of the brand is being exposed. “So, the question is whether that is helpful or harmful to the workplace or the brand.”
Monica McGrath, a Wharton adjunct management professor, says that some of the misunderstanding about social networking is generational. Older workers and managers may have a Facebook page, but it is not essential to them. Younger workers now entering the corporate world rely heavily on Facebook, Twitter and other social media to communicate. “Right now, there is tension between those two generational approaches,” notes McGrath.
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While networking etiquette is in flux, standards will develop, she predicts. Typically, business norms evolve through official policy disseminated by organizations and by “reality” that bubbles up from the organization’s grassroots. “The question is: How accessible do you want to be? [Today,] young people want to be very accessible, and in an international corporation you are expected to be available [around the clock]. Time zones mean nothing. The norms will continue to develop based upon generational leadership.”
While the norms are in transition, McGrath says she does not think that corporations will try to create standards through official policies. “It really depends on the corporate context or even the individual context. If you are working on an important project and a number of people depend on your input, you would [want to] be much more available than if you have finished the project and are on vacation. The etiquette of that is more dependent on the individual and his or her priorities.”
McGrath, who is also a human resources consultant, says she–like most entrepreneurs–is typically available around the clock. But “as long as nothing is perking,” she turns off her phone. “People need to determine what makes sense. If the boss is up at midnight sending e-mail, some people are OK with that, but other people are not. If you have family priorities that are different than [those of] the boss, you have to work that out.”
Business consultant Terri Thompson, founder of Etiquette in Action in Paris, Ky., says the same idea applies to managing the scope of social networks. Cautious friending is one way to keep a Facebook page from becoming a business liability, she adds. “It’s not that impressive to have 500 friends on Facebook or LinkedIn whom you don’t know, and you don’t know what they might say.”
BlackBerrys in Meetings
Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor, says the uncertainty over access etiquette is the result of fundamental changes that computer-mediated technologies have made to basic human communication. Much of the confusion is due to the inability to have a reciprocal conversation in the context of, say, Twitter or Facebook postings. “So it’s hard to cue in exactly as to what the etiquette should be at the moment, because it’s sequential. The brevity and lack of richness of these computer-mediated technologies make it harder to behave in ways that people are used to.”
She says there are likely to be two major paths to developing etiquette for today’s new forms of communication. One is through the introduction of new people into an organization who bring with them norms that gradually become accepted. For example, she recalls a student who had worked at an investment bank in New York and transferred to an office in the Midwest. During a one-on-one meeting with a manager, the newcomer made the mistake of answering his BlackBerry. The manger scolded the transplant, who was baffled because his former manager in New York had always answered his BlackBerry during meetings. For now, Barsade says, the Midwest customs would prevail in that setting, but as others from outside organizations enter, the office’s subculture is likely to change.
The other way that etiquette around new communication devices is likely to evolve is through social information within the organization. “People influence each other,” she says. The most important determinants of socialization in any organization are managerial role models. Workers watch top managers and their immediate supervisors to learn what is accepted and, better yet, rewarded in the organization. This is more powerful than corporate edicts issued by the human resources department, and even stronger when senior leaders and operational managers are in sync. “If this is something senior management cares about, it will be a top-down process, which can be more systematic and effective than a bottom-up process,” she notes.
Given that power, wouldn’t managers demand all-access, all the time? Not necessarily, says Barsade: “Senior management is increasingly recognizing the downside to constant availability, and may well need to [rein] employees in from over-using the technology. This can be seen in firms that have days, or times of day, that employees are told not to use computer-mediated technology. Also, senior management would have to manage being [on the receiving end] of that much access, which could be a problem in its own right.”
Communication ‘Pecking Order’
According to Thompson, there is a general “pecking order” in the business community when it comes to responding to different forms of communication. E-mail should be answered within 24 hours and a telephone call returned even sooner. Social networking sites take the lowest priority. The order makes sense because a phone call or e-mail seeks specific information from the one individual being contacted. Social networks come last because, she notes, they are a wide-open forum where communications is less targeted at one individual.
Then there is the question of the professional colleague on Facebook who, while eagerly awaiting your response to a work-related deliverable, notices that you have been busy updating your Facebook page with social news. Is it proper to call someone out for such an apparent dereliction of duty? Again, it all boils down to context, says Williams. “I can imagine being in a situation where maybe I need to take a break and blow off steam by saying something on Facebook.”
Rothbard notes that Facebook itself is not likely to take a role in establishing norms to sort out the conflicts between business and personal friending. “I don’t know if Facebook wants to be Emily Post,” she says. Social networking sites might emphasize options that allow users or organizations to tailor their own norms for dealing with problems that can crop up when mixing business and personal communications, she suggests.
Matwyshyn does not expect another site to evolve as a replacement for the highly personal space that once defined Facebook before it was infiltrated by business and professional users. “If you have built up 500 Facebook friends, that’s a sunk cost,” she says. “If you stop using it, you’re cutting off 500 connections and the switching costs are high. So, there’s a stickiness in the use of the application.”
Meanwhile, the root of many of the awkward situations that arise around the use of Facebook and other social networking sites is giving out too much information, faculty emphasize. Rothbard says that in face-to-face communications, people are much more careful about the volume and nature of the information they disclose. On the Internet, however, “there is a lot of lack of awareness–or obliviousness–about who is receiving this information.” Someone using Twitter, for example, may think that only 20 people will read their message; meanwhile, millions of unknown people may stumble upon the information. Matwyshyn agrees that users of social networking sites must be more cognizant of the viral nature of their posts, especially in any context where work and private life are intertwined. “They have to realize there are potential negative consequences that can flow from coworkers knowing more about you than is prudent.”
Forbes.com)
