Social Media Arrogance Towards Newbies

I catch myself getting more and more judgemental at people who come online for the first time and I think it is something that we are all guilty of in our little online communities. I hear a lot of us saying things like…

Just be yourself and join in the conversation

You don’t need to be taught Twitter just jump in and engage

Set up a simple Facebook page and upload your photos.

There is no doubt that those are simple things to do, most people reading this could do them in a matter of minutes with one eye closed but there are thousands of people who are trying to market their businesses and wouldn’t have the first idea how to even upload a photo never mind how to get their Facebook vanity URL.

A certain amount of us live and breath this stuff 24/7, we spend a lot more time online than we do offline. Just think about that last sentence for a second. Some people might spend as litttle as an hour online because they have flowers to arrange or hotel beds to make yet as a small business they would be expected to have a presence on Twitter and Facebook at the very least.

What if I put you on a theater stage in front of 300 people with no rehearsal, a script and an audience of 200? Could you walk our and deliver your lines first time?

Go easy on newbies. If somebody comes in with a message like the example below as their first tweet don’t call them idiots. Don’t make fun of them. Don’t sit on your lofty perch and tell them to get a clue about Internet marketing. Try helping them, tell them in a nice way that Twitter isn’t about selling. Encourage them to talk to people, tell them to take some pictures of the food. Chances are they don’t know much about the Internet but have been told by every marketer and every paper that Twitter is the savior for their restaurant, their marketing miracle in a box.

Just because we live and breath this stuff doesn’t mean that everybody does.