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All I Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten
By dana | September 26, 2007
For those of us who are just jumping into the social media ocean, the rules and protocol can be a bit confusing. Robert Fulgham’s assertion that “All I Really Need To Know I learned in Kindergarten” gives us some very helpful ground rules to keep in mind while getting connected.
Share everything
If you find great information, don’t just read it, maybe leave a comment and move on. When you find a great post, useful tool or other great content, share it! Your social success hinges on what you contribute to your community. Only sharing content that you are in some way affiliated with is the fastest way to become a social network outcast!
If you happen upon a technique, strategy or other helpful hint when using any of the big social sites, pass it along! The benefits of your discovery can multiply exponentially when you allow others to use and possibly expand upon your ideas.
Play fair
Sure, there are countless of ways to attempt scamming the social networks. If you’re cheating, you’ll probably get caught anyway. But even if you manage to allude the powers that be, the most important powers, your fellow users will notice, might call you out and certainly will keep you from benefiting from your deceptions!
The reason to go social is the connections you make to people. Those connections are invaluable in terms of thriving in the social media landscape. Increased traffic and readership will follow naturally as you become a social butterfly. By choosing to not play fair, you’re not only cheating the system, you’re really cheating yourself.
Don’t hit people
Honest criticism of someone’s opinions, theories, etc. and opposing points of view are an important facet of being social. Keep in in mind that as strongly as you may disagree, attacking someone personally for their thoughts might have been a great way to garner respect on the playground, but the consequences of the things you say online are a lot longer lasting than a week’s worth of detentions 
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody
Like any online communications, it’s easy for your words to be misunderstood or misinterpreted…there is no Sarcasm font. Obviously, it’s best to avoid being intentionally hurtful. But just like “real life” if you’ve needlessly hurt someone’s feelings or personally attacked them, it’s only right that you acknowledge your misstep and apologize if necessary.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together
Learn the rules of any community you join. Equally important, find some expert users with similar niches or common interests, read their blogs, observe their actions in a community and start to figure out how things are done in a particular social network. Once you have gotten to “know” them via all of those means, then you can start to befriend them.For various reasons, not everyone will immediately reciprocate your friendship, but if you show your genuine respect for them by actively participating in their social circle, a good number of them will. Once you start to build your own personal network, hold onto their hands for dear life! Ask for support, ask questions and be willing to give back as much as you take. And of course, as you start to move up the social chain, remember to reach behind you and help the latest newcomers. After all, that’s how communities work
BONUS:
I’m A Don’t: This post contained many links to posts about various social media topics. However, I tried to be cute and link to them from within the post not realizing that with my theme you couldn’t see the links! There are various theories on the visibility of links and the number of them. In fact, I think we’ll be seeing an article about that topic soon and I will link to that here.
I’m not picking a side on this, but in this post I lost sight of my main goal, providing a resource for other social media users. So I’ve taken all of the links out and am putting them down here. And I’m noting my boo boo so that you can see even more of the benefits of social media as you can see in the comments below…my social buddies are the ones who pointed it out to me
If you are new to Social Media as I am or just interested in the topic, I highly recommend checking them out
- The Unspoken Secrets to Long Lasting Traffic With Stumbleupon
- Do You Get MyBlogLog Yet?
- How To Become A Success In Online Marketing pt 1
- Social Media Traffic - Is it about titans reciprocating? Or vote whoring? or…
- Banned from Digg.com
- StumbleUpon Networking:How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships
- Death to Linkbait. Long live Sphinn-bait!
- StumbleUpon Quintuplet From the King of Blogging Gobshites
- Claim Your StumbleUpon Blog Through Technorati
- Cross-pollinating Social Media Viral Seeds
Other Stuff You Might Like:
September 26th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Thanks for the link, Dana. An excellent use of nearly cloaked links too! Yes, being a good netizen means being courteous to our fellow users. Unfortunately, the net is also a magnet for some really unsociable people too.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Thank you for linking to me! What’s funny is that I skimmed this and saved it into my queue for today’s stumbles without realizing you wrote about me in it! I think this will make it more clear to people who are new to social media.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
That’s true Matt. I have to imagine being the unsociable type, on top of everything else, makes work a lot less enjoyable!
September 26th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Thanks Tinu! Glad you liked it before you noticed my “nearly cloaked links”
September 26th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Hmm your blog gives me food for thought along the same lines as Tinu and something I made a choice about some time ago though I haven’t written about it.
It is not something negative as much as a real choice to be made.
Incoming linkage
September 26th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
First-time visitor here, Dana, and this is a good post to get started with. The Golden Rule applies to any human interaction, but especially online where it’s so easy to misunderstand others.
September 26th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
@Andy I’m excited to hear your thoughts. As I’ve recently become more and more social, I find myself constantly searching through everyone’s blogs to find out what’s kosher and what’s not and how the whole machine works…last thing somebody new wants to do is do something that’s “just not done” without knowing it…though I’ve done it plenty. I thought putting this together and providing the links to some of the posts that I’ve found useful in figuring everything out might be helpful to my fellow newbies.
@Matt Thanks for stopping by. That’s one of my main problems. I’m usually pretty good at treating others how I’d like to be treated, but I’m also pretty sarcastic…so I have to work on that with people that I don’t know so well
September 26th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Hi all…I’ve just changed my CSS so that all links are blue and underlined. Sorry for confusion, there were no colors of hat involved…just me being lazy and not going through each line of CSS included in the theme!
September 26th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Hehe, glad I managed to grab a screenshot before hand
My theme as standard uses very similar linking colours to what you had, and it does have some advantages, and disadvantages.
That is what I am going to be writing about…
September 26th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Well, I’m glad I can serve as a “don’t” for you Andy
I’m just glad somebody called it to my attention!
Here I write something to help other new people with do’s and don’ts and the most helpful thing will be my CSS don’t…hopefully it will help someone
September 26th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
It isn’t a don’t - it is a strategic decision
September 26th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
I get that. But I think in this case it’s don’t for me…I was trying to be cute-see above…and it took away the usefulness of the links to my readers looking for helpful resources.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Another problem you are probably not aware of, if someone subscribes to comments, they currently get 2 emails with each reply.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
No, I wasn’t aware of that. I have the Comment E-mail Responder plugin and the Subscribe to Comments. In the description of the first is says it won’t send a second e-mail in case the person subscribes.
But no one had brought that to my attention. I’ve disabled the E-mail responder for now.
Seriously, thank you for letting me know!
September 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Cute article, Dana! Anyone who references Robert Fulgham gets a thumbs up from me! Did you read his follow-up to that book?
They can be a bit cheesy at times, but have a wonderful and quite applicable message.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Hi Kate! Thanks…was that the “It was on fire when I laid down on it” (or something like that) book? Cheesy, sure, but good
September 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Dana,
How wise you are. Love the analogy and I echo some of the commenters above.
I have a challenge with “Don’t Hit People”, acutally, it’s “Don’t Hit People Back”, as it’s in my nature to take issue with people who indiscriminately attack others for no good reason.
Thanks for the article and the adjoining links.
September 26th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Hi Morgan,
I think a lot of us probably have less of a problem with “Don’t Hit People” and would have more of a problem not retaliating or standing up for others…still probably does more harm than good, but I can definitely relate to that instinct!
Thanks for your comment. Sorry for the delay, Akismet snagged you
September 26th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Yay Ten Sphinns!
September 26th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Dana,
What a better place our blogosphere would be if everyone were to apply these rules! Great post.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
The thing is, we learnt all these in kindergarten, but as we progress further along in life, we are taught to unlearn them all. Hopefully this can help as a refresher in its own little way.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Dana you are a promising writer.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:51 am
Great post and thanks for the mention, maybe people will learn something about my banned from digg post.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
[…] is an example taken from Dana's excellent rules of social media, which she learnt in […]
September 28th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
“Don’t Hit People” - I love it. That’s a very big one I would think. It’s important to play nice, be a team player, and certainly not “hit” anyone. Great post.
September 29th, 2007 at 8:02 am
[…] She reveals that at the end of the tunnel, all you really needed to know about social media, you learnt it in kindergarten! You wonder why we all studied so hard after […]
September 29th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I found this page b/c YC over at Internet Marketing Mind linked to this post. Hahaha, I couldn’t agree more…as a person who’s pretty gullible in real life and will sometimes miss sarcasm, I totally agree that online it’s even more important to remember that there’s no sarcasm font. But then again, that’s why we have winking smileys!!!
September 29th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I always try to be careful when I comment so I am not misunderstood. I do wish there was a sarcasm font. Also, a kidding around font. That would be great!
October 1st, 2007 at 1:08 pm
A nice idea to compare Social Media to your time in Kindergarten.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Thanks Dana for this great resource. I have mastered Squidoo (now a Top 100 Lensmaster), but I am new to Facebook and your guidance here re protocols is particularly relevant to this latter site. Tinu has also been helpful in providing guidance with the Facebook protocols. I recommend her F.U.N. ebook highly.
May 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[…] SU. One of my favorites is Andy Beard’s 25 Reasons You Get Thumbs Up. Another is Dana Wallet’s All I Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned in Kindergarten. Both of these blogs are among the best on the Net for quality content and having hearts of […]