One of the biggest frustrations that I hear from businesses is that it is difficult to message “fans” on facebook.  While it frustrates me at times too, I have also recognized that most people don’t want more SPAM, and so that is probably a good thing. No business owner ever thinks that their messages are spam, but “spam is in the eye of the beholder”.

In fact, I read my facebook mail in the morning before I read my email for that very reason. Although I have a great SPAM filter (gmail), I still get 130 or so emails per day, and most of them come through during the night.

Many will rejoice however, to hear that facebook is experimenting with business pages being able to email fans. This is being rolled out as a test, but may be available soon. According to The Next Web, this is what you will see:

If this does become available for all users, it will be imperative for you to understand how to use it, otherwise you will not only tick people off, but you will lose fans. Here are a few questions to ask yourself before sending an email:

1. Ask yourself if the message helps them or only you

2. Does it have value for them?

3. Would you pick up the phone to convey the message?

4. Are you sending this message because you believe they will want to receive it, or because YOU want them to?

5. If it cost you money to send it, would you send it?

Remember, most people who ‘liked’ your page did so before this was available. Unlike regular email, they didn’t ‘opt in’ to receive FB mail from you and they will easily “unlike” you if you abuse it.

 

Okay, I promised a post on the latest Facebook changes and although I am sure there will be more to add, I am going to start here

Here is how Facebook explains it:
Facebook Pages and Profiles with Subscribe: Two Ways to Connect

Facebook Pages are now used in a number of different ways to represent businesses and organizations, public figures, bands, and more. For the last several years, they have been the primary tool for those entities and people to have a presence on Facebook. Today, we’re introducing a new way for public figures to maintain a personal profile and also share public updates with a wider audience. Now that Facebook offers two key tools that enable public figures to connect with their audience, we wanted to provide a summary of each and explain the ways they can be used:

Pages have advanced marketing features for managing your brand or business on Facebook. Pages can be maintained by multiple people on your team, have insights to understand who your fans are, and can target posts by language and location (e.g., tell only fans in New York about your show there). Pages can also be promoted with Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories.

Profiles with subscribe are ideal if you want to personally connect with friends, family and other people who are interested in you. It’s fun to receive updates from friends and others that you want to subscribe to, and it’s easy to publish to your subscribers on the go. Anyone who subscribes to your profile can receive your public posts in their News Feed.

Which is right for me?

Facebook Pages help public figures and organizations build communities and tell their stories in their own unique voice. In addition, Pages offer tools to help you analyze how people are interacting with your Page so you can monitor key metrics, get demographic and geographic insights about your audience, and increase connections and interactions. For example, if your band is on tour, you can announce this on your page and create events for each show from your page to allow people to RSVP and attend.

Should I create a Page or allow subscribers to get my public updates?
If your goal is to represent your business, brand, or product on Facebook, create a Page. Pages let you engage with people on Facebook, and offer tools (like multiple admin features and insights) that help you manage and track engagement.

If your goal is to share updates from your personal profile with a broader audience, allowing subscribers is a good option. When you allow subscribers, anyone can subscribe and get your public updates in News Feed, even if you’re not friends on Facebook. You can choose who sees what though.

You can have an unlimited amount of subscribers, and subscribe to as many as 5000 people. (You can have 5000 friends on your profile.)

There is a lot of buzz around facebook making itself more “twitteresque”, and in some sense I can see that. On twitter anyone can follow you and see your updates (you don’t have to accept or approve them).
I still am undecided about my opinion of the whole subscriber thing for myself personally. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• I understand that a lot of people are at the 50000 friend limit, but having a ‘page’ resolves that.
• I am always of the mindset that you should assume that all of your posts are public, so having other people see them really shouldn’t be a big deal (?)
• I am very conscious about posting pictures of my kids and don’t want the whole world looking at them.
• When people send you a friend request and you ignore them, they can still see your posts anyway
• I get FB emails from people that I don’t know already (including one trying to ‘pick me up’ this morning)
• I wonder if FB is going to get so big that it loses it’s value for many
• Facebook is tweaking friend lists in the hopes that will help but I’m not sure how many people will use them (?)
• It will allow people to see your updates without the awkwardness of asking you to ‘be their friend’ when they don’t know you

There is a lot of discussion around this being a move to make facebook more like Google + (like in this article)

Facebook is also addressing the ‘potential noise’ issue by updating friend lists ( read more here)

Here are some other articles about the changes:

Allfacebook

Mashable

 

Businesses on Facebook Rejoice! You Can Now Convert Your Business Page!

For many business owners, figuring out how to leverage the power of facebook is confusing. The first point of confusion is in setting up ‘a business account’.

It has been very common to see businesses set up as ‘personal accounts’. Many people still use personal accounts for their business even though it violates facebook terms of service, and facebook has and will shut down such accounts. Thus far, many have continued to use them because they don’t want to lose the ‘friends’ that they have established. Starting over with “0″ is just too daunting for many, even thought that is exactly what they would end up with if facebook shut down the account.

You can now “move over” or “migrate your page” and keep your connections!

In one of the best ‘upgrades’ to date, facebook now allows an account owner to ‘convert’ a personal profile page to a ‘like’ [business] page.

Why move?

• Compliance with terms of service (avoid having facebook delete it)
• More professional
• Allows you to use third-party Page applications to set up a Like-gated landing page, run contests, collect email addresses, and more.
• Allows you to change the name of your ‘page’ for better search results
• People are more likely to ‘like’ a business page than accept a friend request from a business
• No limit to the number of ‘friends’ as with personal pages

When setting up a business page [aka Like page], there are a few things to remember:

1. Choose your page name carefully! You can choose your domain name later, but when setting up the page you have to choose the name of the page. How you name the page is very important in regards to branding, and to search. This cannot be changed once you have accumulated fans.

2. Choose type of business carefully. Many people will choose ‘local business’ for example, even though they may [now or in the future] offer other services that aren’t ‘just local’.

3. Populate the page with useful info about you, your business, and what it offers others. People don’t choose to ‘like’ a business just to get advertising messages. What will your page do for them?

Lastly, don’t create a page if you aren’t going to visit it daily! You won’t get activity from others if you aren’t there yourself.

**If you are considering changing your personal page to a like page (vs a profile that you set up for your business) read this article first!

You might want to read this one too.

To migrate your facebook page click here.

Share your thoughts on this. We would love to hear them!

Is your business on facebook?

Questions about migrating your business on facebook? click here or contact me at heathero@heathero.com.

To learn more about how to build your business on facebook, contact me! HeatherO@Heathero.com

 

The squabble between internet giants continues.

The latest is Google’s recent move to disallow facebook’s ability to allow users to find friends via their Gmail account.

According to Google, this is due to facebook’s unwillingness to reciprocate by allowing Google to access facebook users data.

While Google’s argument may sound plausible, the bottom line is that it is a hassle for their users.

Facebook, twitter and other social sites are only as good as the connections that you can make within them, and trying to search for everyone that you know one by one is not only a painful proposition, but a truly unproductive one (and a horrible time sucker!)

The easiest workaround (in my opinion) is to simply import your address book to a free yahoo or microsoft account, and then allow facebook to access that. For those who don’t use an online email system, I used to recommend setting up a gmail account just for this purpose. I will now recommend a microsoft or yahoo account instead.

You can read more about the decision here via Techcrunch.

 

Look! Another Facebook change! I know that just thrills most of you

Let’s check it out:

Facebook recently rolled out ‘friendship pages’.

You may not have noticed them as they are only really ‘find-able’ via the little link that is created when someone posts a comment to someone else.

It appears in the newsfeed:

And on the person’s ‘wall’:

When you click on that link, you see a page that aggregates all of the communications between two people.

I personally find it interesting to see all of those dribs and drabs and comments all in one place.

Lots of people however, find it creepy and invasive.

I’ve read many comments on Facebook’s blog and they are interesting to say the least. I read one woman comment that she was disturbed by seeing posts between her boyfriend and his ex.

Hmmm…what do you say to that?

The reality is that these conversations ARE taking place, whether you see them in context or not. They are public posts that are simply pulled together, so is that invasive and creepy?

I guess ‘invasive and creepy’ are in the eye of the beholder!  I would love to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, remember, that facebook is a psuedo-public space.

Even if you have the tightest security settings ever, those who you are friends with see your ‘public’ activity.  Now they just have the ability to see it in context.

I have yet to find a way that someone could just ‘pull up’ this page whenever they feel like it however. So, if it makes you feel any better, they would have to see a post FROM you TO them (or vice versa) to see, and click on that link.

They can’t just go to your page and see it. You can click on someone else’s page and see YOUR friendship page WITH them, but not with someone else.

(I’m not saying it CAN’T be done, but I haven’t figured out how you would.)

Please share your thoughts on Facebook friendship pages.

 

I am always fascinated by how different people see things.

I recently saw someone post on facebook that they are deleting any ‘friends’ that they haven’t heard from in X number of months. That is certainly their prerogative, but it made me pause.

My initial reaction to the facebook post was to roll my eyes (to be completely honest) ‘It’s not all about you”, I thought.

The truth is, most humans come from the land of “what’s in it for me”.
It’s human nature to a large extent, but we do have control over it.
We control our perspective, how we choose to see things, and what we set our intentions to be.

I couldn’t help but think:

We are our perspectives, our intentions, our expectations, and a myriad of other things.
(Right now I am musing on those 3).

• As far as facebook  (or anywhere else) goes, not everyone feels comfortable commenting. Not everyone knows what to say, some people are inherently more ‘chatty’, etc.
• If you are posting content that has value, is it fair to delete that person that might benefit from your posts?
• Or are you posting content purely for your own edification (via comments)?

Are you on “all about me-er?”

It’s easy to be. We all are, and need to be on some level. But to what extent?

It’s not just about Facebook.

Facebook is just one of many places to see and experience this, but It permeates life on every level.

It reminds me of a poem that I read when I was 17, and watching my father die before my very eyes. I have never forgotten it:

“Disregard what the world owes you, and focus on what you owe the world” …~SH Payer

(you can read it in it’s entirety here)

I believe that what we ‘get’ in life is in direct proportion to what we give.

Everyone certainly has their own reasons for doing things, and being online is no different. I encourage you to ask yourself ‘why am I here?” (read: on facebook, on this planet, or anywhere else for that matter).

I often tell my son “You aren’t here just to be happy. You are here to make a difference, and to contribute something to this planet, and the people around you.”

I strongly believe that this is true, and often we don’t even know what a difference we make. All we can do is do what we can do. But starting with the belief that we are here to make a difference, and the intention of giving, not just ‘getting’ is a great start!

I encourage you to take a few minutes to ponder this question, as so eloquently phrased by Michelle Gower, “Are you looking through a mirror, or a magnifying glass?”

(Just something to think about

Get in the conversation! What are your thoughts?

 

If you didn’t read my first post on the new facebook groups, feel free to start there! (Click here)

Now that the new facebook groups have been out for a bit, I wanted to post my “take” on them so far.

The new facebook groups are still ‘too new to tell’ in many respects, but they certainly have the potential to change the way that we use facebook quite a bit. The question is, whether it will.

As facebook staffers admit, the mass majority of people will continue to use facebook as they always have. They aren’t ‘creators’ of anything. Just like “in real life”, there are those who are entrepreneurial, and those who aren’t. (That’s not a bad thing!)

Advantages to the new groups include:

• All posts have the ability to be seen by members (under the  default settings that is. Users can change their own settings.)
• Ability to group chat. This is a fantastic feature, but also a curse to some (which is why facebook recently added the ability for users to disable it:)
• Ability to create a place for like-minded, or like-interested people to connect differently. This is a new and improved way for people to connect around similar interests, in a more relevant environment, and a more interactive way.
• Like a Yahoo group – in facebook. In some respects this is like a yahoo group, only it’s more “personal”. Personal in the sense that it ‘feels that way’ (primarily due to the user photos in my opinion)
• Better than email lists. In many ways this is better than an email list for many (although for certain groups of people, email lists are ideal). For those of us who spend a lot of time in facebook, this is a good thing. It is also good because we feel more connected to the people there (see photo comment above). For those with Gynormous lists, this isn’t the alternative, but if you are focused on being relevant to very specific people, or those with specific interests, it may be a good thing to do in addition to those lists.
• Ability to participate without having to go to facebook. For me this isn’t an advantage, since I am usually in facebook. However, this is appealing to many. People can read and respond to posts in the group directly through email without having to go to facebook. This could be an advantage if you are using your cell phone, or if you work for one of those dinosaur companies that doesn’t allow you to use facebook at work (*eyes roll:)
• Privacy, but with notifications. To me this is one of the biggest advantages to the new groups. I have had groups in the past with my coaching groups. They wanted the upmost assurance of privacy so that they could post freely, so the groups were set to ‘private’. The trouble was, they had to GO THERE every day to see new posts as they did not receive any notifications of new updates. This was a big pain, and dramatically reduced the value of it. Now they can receive notifications and updates via facebook and/or email (and they can choose the settings).

Whether this will ‘change everything’ remains to be seen. People don’t typically embrace new things fully, and this may be no different. Time will tell. I do believe that it does have the potential to change the way that many people use facebook. I can see people spending more time in groups than ‘in the feed” (I already am anyway:), and I can see people using groups for communications in ways that they couldn’t before, and so on.

Time will tell, I suppose!

What are your thoughts?

Feel free to add your own thoughts regarding the advantages, or any pitfalls that you see or anticipate with these new groups.

 

After a 60 day lockdown at the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, big changes to the social network were announced today.

As always, I will break them down as simply (and non-techy) as possible.

There are 3 Changes:

1. A new dashboard to help you better control your privacy, monitor the applications that you have given access to, as well as those sites that you have given permissions to via facebook connect (ie using the ‘like button’ on websites)

2. You can now download all of your ‘stuff’. As Mark Zuckerberg pointed out, what you post on facebook ‘is yours’, and now you can download it. This is especially powerful (in my opinion) for pictures. I frequently upload pictures via my phone, and now I can easily pull them out of facebook. (No word yet on the supported formats, etc).

3. This is ‘the BIG ONE!’

Facebook Groups have not just gotten a makeover, they have just gotten a whole new identity! Say good-by to friend lists, and to groups as we used to know them.

In order to avoid ‘overwhelm’, this post will focus on #3 as it is such a big change in the overall experience and will create a radical shift in how you use facebook (as well as probably bringing folks onboard the FB train that weren’t before).

If you are thinking “oh great, I had a group, then moved to a fan page, then it became a ‘like’ page and now I have to move back???”

Relax, and no you don’t

New Facebook Groups are very different from old groups, or ‘pages’.

They are more like a hybrid of friend lists + the old groups on steroids.

What New Groups are:

• The new groups will be created by users to ‘group together’ people by whatever parameters or context they choose.
• You can create a family group, work friends group, project group, etc.
• You can post content to that group only instead of to everyone.
• You can also ‘group chat’ with anyone in that group.

• You can post documents to the group.
• You can make the group open, private, or secret.
• You can create an email address for the group so that members can send and receive updates via email (these will post to the groups page too).
• Members of the group will receive notifications of posts to the group (you can turn this on/off).
• Members must be invited to the group, but can be invited by anyone in the group.
• If you are added to a group you don’t want to belong to, you can leave.

What is Cool about this:

• Group chat! Now instead of doing rapid fire marathon facebook emails with my two or more friends, we can chat!
• More Relevance, less noise. Now instead of posting something that goes out to EVERYONE, you can be much more relevant & provide much greater value to those that you are connected with.
• This goes for events too! Instead of posting an event that goes into everyone’s newsfeed, or emailing to ensure that they see it, you can post it on your groups page.
• Worried about posting photos? Now you can post those pics of your kids just to your family (or those of yourself at a party without your boss seeing them
• Now instead of wondering if your family, or certain friends saw those pictures (or having to tag them all to be sure, or having to email them all), you can post them to the group and know that each member will be notified.
• Mailing lists, documents ,etc. will be great for people who currently use yahoo groups, project management platforms, or traditional email to share information.
• “Secret Groups” can be used if you don’t want anyone to see who is a member, or any posts.
• “Open Groups” are fully public. All members and posts are public.
• Closed Groups (which is the default setting) allow people to see who belongs to the group, but not the posts.

One of the big questions that I hear people asking already is:

How does this affect Business/fan pages?

I’m not sure that it really does. Keeping in mind that people cannot join any group without an invitation, or by requesting one and ‘being accepted’,  I don’t see this as a setup that businesses would want to use in place of a ‘business page’ (formerly known as Fan Pages). BUT, I will hold off on judgment onthat until I have seen more, and am more certain about some of the functionality.

This could be very useful however for business owners to group clients, customers, employees, etc. When I do seminars, I often have people with concerns that ‘their competition’ will see their brilliant content. My personal feeling has always been “share value”. Focus on providing good for others versus holding back out of fear. That is still my belief, but this does give another option for those who worry about this.

This is all new, so I am certain that I will notice new nuances, details, etc., and new questions will arise. I will update as we go. I’m still testing whether someone can join (or how they would find) open groups, and how updates appear (currently I am getting notifications, but nothing in my ‘newsfeed’).

For now, rejoice that this offers you more options in

• what you post, and
• what you ‘hear’ on facebook,
• great new tools to share with your friends, and others, and
• a whole new level of privacy!

To create a new group, click here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more regarding this change visit Facebook’s blog post complete with video.

 

Recently facebook changed the way that friend requests are displayed and handled. It seems like a subtle change, but it is an important one.

Instead of being faced with accepting or ignoring, users now see Accept or “not now’.

In spite of my jokes about facebook making it easier to procrastinate now, there are a coupld of significant points here.

Now if you want to “NOT accept them, you have to really work at it.  Now it’s a multi-step process that many won’t be able to figure out (& many won’t bother).

This is the rub…

What many people don’t realize is that when you clicked ‘ignore’ before, the person got your updates in their newsfeed based on your privacy settings. They didn’t see anything that you did not have set to private – it was all ‘public’ information. But having those updates appear for them, vs. them going to your page is a little different, and I would dare say, most people wouldn’t like it.

NOW those same people still get that information in their feed, but  it is harder to remove them.

Many people will likely just click ‘not now’ and go on about their day without another thoght. AND without realizing that those folks are getting their updates. So, it’s essentially like twitter in many respects.

On twitter, anyone who wants to can go to your twitter page and read your tweets (if they are public). They don’t have to follow you to do it. They can also choose to follow you, and you don’t

have to accept them. The only way for them not to get your tweets in their stream is to  block them But that is easy to do.  (They can still see the updates on your public page).

So, on the one hand it’s ‘not a big deal’  if you look at it from the perspective of: it’s public info, and it’s no different than twitter (which I am sure is how facebook sees it).

It is kind of a big deal on the other hand, from the perspective of:  most people aren’t aware of it, and it’s now a pain in the butt to ‘remove people’ so they don’t get those updates.

But, as I always say with all things facebook: what can you do? demand a refund?  I don’t love this change, but I do love facebook. It is a pain, and I don’t love it, but now you will know what to do!

Here are the steps to follow when you get a friend request from someone that you don’t want to friend:

1. Click NOT NOW

2. Click on the link that says

“Requests page” (this is the easiest way to do it! ONce this window is gone, it gets much trickier)

3. Click “view hidden” (which in and of itself is a bit hidden!)

4. Delete

If you don’t do this at the time that you click ‘now now’, it is a bit trickier, but here is how:

1. Go to your newsfeed (click on home)

2. Look for ‘other requests’ on the right sidebar’

3. Click “View Hidden”

4, Delete

Keep in mind, if you don’t delete them, they will only see what you have designated as public anyway.

As always, make sure you know what your privacy settings are (and your kids’ too!).

**See previous post regarding recent changes to friend requests here**

 

It never ceases to amaze  me how many people who are very intelligent, commit ‘social suicide’ without having any awareness of it.

The irony is, that I know many who are terrified of looking like an idiot online, and don’t need to be. Then there are others who are ‘oh so brilliant’ that do.

People ask me all the time about ‘etiquette’ and ‘rules’ and the thought of either gives me serious heartburn. But as I look around, I realize that I would be helping some folks by at least giving some direction. So I will do that here in my own way.

Image by Sam Canney

Top 10 Ways to be a Jackass online:

10. “I’m the only one that matters”
In other words, only show up to post ‘your stuff’.
Don’t engage or comment or give anything of value to other users. Lots of people read and don’t comment. That’s okay, except if you are posting what matters to you, and never acknowledging what matters to others, it’s like calling a friend and talking only about you and never about them.

9. Go to someone else’s “house” with all of their friends there [uninvited] saying ‘hey check out my product!’
Spamming other people’s ‘space’ [read: wall, comment thread, etc]
is the same thing. Spam is defined by me, as leaving a comment that advertises your business/product/service or posting the same on the person’s wall without them asking for it.

8. “I’m lonely and desperate, I need a boyfriend. Will you be my boyfriend?”
When you say anything that smells like “I’m broke, I need sales” is no different.
Whining about being broke, is the fastest way to repel business IMO (in my opinion). When you are trying to SELL somebody something because YOU need business, people won’t pull out the wallet because they feel sorry for you (even if they like you).

7. “Why haven’t you called me???”
Don’t ‘call out’, or argue with someone on their own page/wall, etc.
If the topic IS a debate that is one thing. But, attacking someone on their own ‘turf’ will never win you more friends. You are in that person’s ‘space’ surrounded by people who LIKE THEM! It’s like picking a fight at a party and their own house. Think about it.

Don’t assume the worst anyway! Just because they didn’t respond to your email chat, doesn’t mean they are ignoring you. Even if you ‘see them’ on facebook, you never know. Maybe they’ve had a rough day and just want to read posts, and comment a bit before they have to sit there and really think about what you have asked for, or want to talk about.

Not only doesn’t it embarrass them, and make you look like a jerk, it makes others uncomfortable. It’s like when you go to dinner and the other couple starts fighting.

6. Say something stupid, then delete it.
I’ve seen this more than once:
Someone gets in a ‘peeing match’ online, says something really nasty or innappropriate, then deletes it. Once it’s posted, it is out there. You are better off ‘taking it back’ through an apology or discussion, but deleting it is a bad idea as someone will have seen it. It is okay to be human! A humble apology goes a long way.
I once posted “Happy Thursday” and it was Friday! Do you think no one has ever thought it was one day of the week when it wasn’t? It’s okay! Really! In fact, it created a lot of conversation! Sometimes it makes people’s day to know they aren’t ‘the only one’.

5. Come to my event!!! Use email for mass email, not social networks. Most of us who hate mass email to begin with, go to facebook, etal to get away from that. It’s like coming to my ‘vacation home’ to bother me. There is a reason that facebook limits the number of people you can email at a time, think about it. On Facebook if you invite someone to an event, you can send mass emails. I’ve actually heard social media ‘gurus’ teach people to do this. Admittedly, lots of people don’t even look at invites, so you may feel like sending them an email is the way to get them to notice. At least consider whether they CAN (if you are in Texas, why send it to people in NC?), and consider whether it is relevant for them. You would be amazed at how many people invite me to their ‘learn facebook 101′ webinars!). I also receive frequent invites to jewelry parties. My mom does jewelry parties, so I would not go to someone else’s, even if I like them!
ASK them! As in:
PS, please let me know if you don’t want to receive invitations or emails in the future. I want you to know about them if you are interested but certainly don’t want to bother you if you don’t.

4. D#$n Stupid #$%ing…
Don’t use bad language just because you think it’s cool. I don’t claim to have the cleanest mouth on the planet by any means! (I was a paramedic in my former life…there’s a whole story around that) BUT!!! Saying vs. typing is a bit different. There are times where I do believe that I just can’t make the point I am trying to make any other way (ex. there is no other way of saying ‘jackass’ in my opinion:). Be you, But just throwing words in everywhere like the kid who is trying to be ‘cool’ is annoying.

3. “Please be my friend!!!”
Asking for friends for fans (or whine about not having any).
Seriously! Would you do this in real life?
“Hey everybody, I need more friends! Would you PLEASE send me some?”
Want more friends or fans? Be more worthy! Say stuff people enjoy, post things people enjoy reading! Comment on what OTHER people post!

2. “I’m smart, you’re dumb”
Sometimes people do this in an effort to be helpful. Most of the time people do this in an effort to make themselves look good. “Hey so and so, you are wrong. The right way to do this is…” That makes me want to vomit on my keyboard every time! AND it makes me instantly dislike the commenter no matter who they are. Ask yourself ‘how will this make them feel if I say it this way?” Or stop and thing how you would feel if someone responded publicly to you this way. Often times it’s all in how you say it.

1. Be a troll:
According to wikipedia, this is defined as:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion

(Ironically many of these people actually knew what that term meant prior to reading the definition, and they often do it anyway under the excuse that they are “breaking the ice” or simply “creating a conversation”. Yes, well the conversation may ensue, but it’s usually about what a jerk they are)

The bottom line is, when in doubt ask
“how this would look in real life?”

If you never show up at a friends house, and then show up at their party with your brochures in hand, you aren’t going to be well liked.

If you show up and tell the host how stupid they are in front of all of their friends, you are going to look like a jackass.

If you show up and pick a fight just to watch the sparks fly??? Same as above!

Look for ways to add value, and you will be seen for who you are. Ask yourself how you want to make people feel. Do you want them to walk away from you (or your post or comment) better than they were before?

If you post something and think ‘did that sound ____?”
Add a comment that says “wow, that did not come out like I meant it!” People will appreciate that. After all, how many of us have NEVER done that??? If you aren’t sure if it sounded jackassy, say so or ask. Whether you are sure it did or not, a humble apology goes a long way!
(in fact, I “ate a little crow” this morning myself:)

These are simply from my point of view of course, I’d love to hear yours!
What do you think?