The 5 Golden Rules of Posting to Social Media

Nowadays, social media has become a bit wild. While most of us are fully aware of the basic etiquette of real-life interactions, we have yet to reach a consensus on what’s acceptable—and not acceptable—behaviors in the virtual world.

Well, friends, now is the time to set some parameters. here are the five golden rules you need to remember every time you’re about to click that “share” button.

1. Follow Political Correctness
Before hitting share, take a pause for a while and ponder whether the thing you’re going to say is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Even if you’re proud of your traditional morals, maybe those principles aren’t appropriate to be shared online. It’s okay to talk about it with your friends, but the online community is a rather bigger world. Be nice to everyone. Avoid being too judgmental or you’ll risk having social media friends start unfriending you.

2. Avoid Sharing Too Much
The concept of TMI—too much information—is not only about sharing embarrassing info about yourself. Oversharing can be as simple as posting your every action and thought. Nobody wants to know about your LQ with beau, your sex life or your family issues. We also do not need to see photos of your bills, selfies in the bathroom or your calloused feet. Better posts to share are photos of your cute baby or your beloved pets.

3. Know When to Keep Quiet
When you have nothing good to share, it would be best to just keep your mouth shut. Trust us, this is a trait that most of your online friends would greatly appreciate.

4. Stay Away from Trolls
Any attempt to engage in a decent discussion with a troll is absolutely useless. These conversations almost always end up in a personal and shallow argument. Even if you’re arguing about politics and religion, the conversation will always end up with the troll calling you fat and ugly, and rudely editing your profile picture into a photo with devil horns and fangs in it.

5. Share Things that Actually Makes Sense to Everyone
We all have that friend who shares cryptic posts to her social media—that person who loves to puzzle everyone by saying things like: “Wow… that happened so fast” or “Thank God for another blessing! #feelingblessed”. Here’s a tip: social media is not your private diary. If you are going to share something to the public, make it something they will actually understand. And write it in readable language, too. Keep your post brief and concise to fit into a 140-character limit without omitting half the letters of your post (typng lk ths wnt evn hlp mking ur post undrstndble).

Be a smart social media user. While you can say it is your freedom to share whatever you like, the things you post online reflects your individuality, principles and values; and you wouldn’t want to be misjudged for a single bad post, would you?