How To Internet Better.

Look, the fact is, a lot of people use the internet wrong. Yes, I mean that as objectively wrong, not “distasteful to me”, but actually not good. And I’m not the kind of person who’s going to pander to you by teaching you what a hashtag is. There are eleventy billion social media books and guides and bibles and blog posts and you can figure that one out on your own. So here is a more advanced list of how to internet better. You are welcome.

1. Do not use hashtags and @ symbols on Facebook. Yes, this means, do not autofeed your tweets to your Facebook profile. I know Facebook has recently built in functionality so this actually does something if you do do it, but it looks wrong, and you’re speaking to the wrong crowd, and it’s irritating to your audience. It’s amateur hour. If you don’t have the time to develop content for more than one platform, it’s a better plan to figure out where your audience is and stick to there (hint: if you’re a nonprofit, it’s more than likely Facebook).

2. On Twitter, if you begin a tweet with @xyz, only people who follow both you AND @xyz will see the tweet. To get around this, start your tweet with .@xyz – this way even people who don’t follow @xyz will see it. For bonus points, be sure that a tweet is very relevant to your entire feed if you do this. No one care about something like the following: “Hey, @xyz, what was that awesome brunch spot we went to last week?”

3. Shorten your links, preferably with bit.ly. It’s been proven to get higher clicks than other link shortening services, though what’s really important is that you do it. Twitter’s native functionality for displaying long links is messy.

4. Don’t ever talk about how long it’s been seen you’ve blogged/tweeted/posted. No one really cares. Just say what you have to say. Your audience is waiting and no one expects content from you every day.

5. Reply to people! They’re interacting because they found something you said awesome and this is your golden opportunity to make a connection, especially if it’s a positive comment (which it hopefully is). I am of the school that you should deal with negative replies as quickly and kindly as possible and try to take the conversation offline. For things that are garbled or incomprehensible, I support deletion or hiding.

6. If you’re putting video out there, unless it is absolutely fascinating (think #kony2012 fascinating), keep it to 2-3 minutes. There’s a reason we were all shocked and amazed that a HALF AN HOUR viral video swept the world as quickly as it did. We live in a world of information overload and your message needs to happen in a very easily digestible chunk. Get creative – you can do it.

Looking for help on your internet presence? Get in touch today!