Be a Rebel – Break the Rules Online!

So… when you market online there seem to be a lot of rules telling you to do things a particular way. And then you come across someone telling you that you definitely shouldn’t be doing it like that! How the hell are you supposed to know what you should or shouldn’t be doing when everyone has different opinions about what is right or wrong?

Photo credit: mcarth

To automate or not to automate? Do you have to be on all 29,000 social media sites??? Is it a crime to switch off comments on your blog?! It’s a crazy maze of different opinions and views out there and it’s a minefield trying to match what you want to do with what you think you should do….

….So, here’s my opinion on a few things that cause debate. Of course this is only MY OPINION! If you think I’m completely wrong (wait, what? I’m alwaaays right!), then that’s fine and you should do it your own way – BE A REBEL!

• Auto-DM’s (Direct Messages) on Twitter – Shock horror! People automate direct messages?!? You mean, they didn’t personally send me that lovely message?!??!! Erm, no they probably didn’t. And by the way… I didn’t either!!! Ok, this is a widely debated hot topic on Twitter. I think it is a great way to say hello to all your new followers individually and often starts up conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. There is no way I would have the time or truthfully the inclination to welcome each and every one of my new followers. But I do want to give them a welcome somehow and I do this using Socialoomph and setting up a DM that just says “Hey, thanks for the follow! Hope you enjoy my tweets ”

I don’t put a link in it because I find them annoying to receive, but I know some people who do and find they work quite well (it’s just not for me).

On the other side of the spectrum there are those who think an automated DM is terrible and nothing about social media should be automated. However, I’m not tricking people, if they asked I would tell them, and it saves me time and initiates conversations I wouldn’t have had chance to start so I like ‘em!

• Automating Social Media – By this I mean setting up tweets or status updates to go out at a later time. I kinda think this depends. You can do this the right way or the wrong way. I think setting up updates to go out at a later time can be very useful if you are going to be away for a few days or busy all day and you want to tweet your new blog post later on or at a time when Twitter is busier. Hootsuite and Socialoomph are both great for this. You still need to show up at these places yourself though. It’s all about building relationships and interacting with people, and if the majority of your updates are automated then you really can’t do that.

• Switching Comments Off on Your Blog – Most people say that you have to have comments on your blog to have conversations, build relationships with your readers and potentially start debates within the comments that can lead to more traffic to your blog. However, if you feel that you don’t want to have comments on your blog or that you’re terrible at replying to them (something I’m working on) then if you want to have comments turned off then you can! It is YOUR blog and you are free to run it however you choose.

Some might say you are making a mistake, but you probably don’t entirely agree with everything they do anyway. It’s fine to be different. I like to get comments on my posts and getting to see who is reading and how people feel about what I said but that’s just a personal decision.

Photo credit: theyearwas1989

• You Have to Be on Every Social Media Site – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Foursqure, Plaxo, Myspace, and the rest… No you don’t! You should do what works for you and your business. Yes, if you want maximum exposure you should probably be on the big 3 – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, because for most people that’s where their customers are, but you don’t have to be. I don’t like Myspace, so I’m not on it, I LOVE Twitter so I’m on it a lot (some might say too much) and I find that I get the most from it. You’ll probably get most from what you enjoy, so show up on those sites and get interacting baby!

• You Have to Use Video – Again, no you don’t. It totally depends on your biz and what you want to do. Video is great, your message has the potential to go viral and people love to watch videos, but if you’re sh*t scared of getting in front of the camera, then you really don’t have to. A great way to get around this is to do screen captures, (A screenshot or screen capture, is an image or video taken by the computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor). You can make an instructional video for example where your screen is recorded using something like Jing and you can talk through what you are doing. They are really easy to make and people seem to love them.

• To Follow Or Not To Follow Back On Twitter – Some do and some don’t, it is entirely up to you. And luckily neither option will really be frowned upon because there are so many ‘gurus’ doing it each way. In my opinion, I follow back out of courtesy and so we can build a better relationship with each other. Utilising the ‘list’ function on Twitter means that I can put people into groups so I don’t miss out on different people’s tweets or those who I communicate with regularly. Hootsuite also really helps with this because you can set it to show your lists in separate columns rather than just having your main Twitter feed of all your followers swooping past at an unreadable rate.

• You Should Post Every Week/Day/Hour/Millisecond – A lot of established bloggers post new content every single day. And that’s great if you can do it but it’s just not for me. I aim to post once a week, this doesn’t always happen, and it’s something I want to be more consistent with, but I have no desire to try and create new content to post every day. I just know that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up and I’d rather spend more time on my one post a week than putting out diluted content (I’m not saying other people’s content is diluted – just that mine would be).

I do think it’s good to be consistent in your blogging so your readers know what they’re getting, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal to get off track occasionally. Life just sometimes gets in the way. And really, with the blogs that I read I don’t really notice how often it is they’re posting, unless they haven’t added anything new for ages, time just moves too fast to be aware of it.



In summary, some say do this, others say do that, even many experts disagree, you need to make your own rules for what you do. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t follow what everyone else is doing because there will always be people who agree with you and like the way you do things. It’s fine to take the bits you like from all different people.

Of course there are some things that are always wrong and will always portray you badly online, like spamming for example!

Whatcha think? Leave a comment and let us know. And I’d love it if you spread the love and shared it with your friends.

Lots of rebel love,
Louise