Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Social Netiquette
By: Tom Ogg

A week or so ago a travel agent joined the HBTACommunity.com social network. After a day or so, he started posting unrelated advertisements in the general forum where advertising is forbidden. As a professional network, the community forums and groups are for the sharing of information for everyone’s benefit, as all community members participate in the conversations and archives of thousands of discussions among travel professionals.

What was interesting about this gentleman’s posts is that they were completely unrelated to his travel business. He was offering mentoring on how to best utilize social networks to grow your business. His advertisements were so blatantly invasive that I wondered how this guy could possibly be in a business counseling people regarding social media, as he violated just about every behavior expected of a member of any online community.

So I thought it would be beneficial to identify conduct that is expected in a social media environment. Here are some guidelines that will lead to success for you in an online social setting. These principles apply to social networks, online chat groups, blogs, digests, chat rooms, webinars and other social media that exist in today’s online world. For the sake of this article, we will assume that you are joining to develop new potential clients and sales.

Joining an Online Community: Online communities exist for just about everything you can imagine. There are professional, hobby, dating, sports, educational, travel, and just about everything else that you can imagine. Just on Usenet alone, there are hundreds of thousands of specialty discussion groups. Ning, one social networking platform boasts that it hosts hundreds of thousands of social networks of every type imaginable. There are millions of .phpbb bulletin boards in existence and each one features a different niche as an online forum. All in all, there are millions of social media opportunities to become involved.

The trick to joining an online community is to define your objectives in doing so. If you are joining a group to mine it for business, then you must quality the community’s viability for potential clients. Let’s say that you specialize in selling exotic small ship cruises. It is unlikely that you would get much business from a general cruise forum. However, a specialty social network specifically designed for small ship exotic cruises might be a perfect place to invest your time to establish yourself as an expert on the topic.

Establish Your Profile: Once you have focused your energy on social media that will potentially yield results in your niche, you should start to build your profile so that potential customers can see your level of expertise. Treat your profile like a storefront. Your profile is your unique opportunity to establish yourself and your expertise. If you have video and photos that add to this objective, upload them, as well. Avoid putting anything in your profile of a personal nature and try to refine your profile so that it gives visitors the best possible image of your value proposition. You can link to your website from your profile page, but do so in a non-invasive way. Do not make it appear that you are trying to hijack traffic from the community, as everyone sees this for what it is. Once your profile is finished you should start acquiring friends that may become potential clients. You can find potential friends in forum posts relative to your specific niche, in groups and in the “friends” profile of your existing friends.

Never Advertise:  Never post any direct advertising in forums, groups, on walls or in private messages, as this is seen as invasive behavior and will hurt you more than help you. Many Administrators will ban you from a site for advertising. Most social media offer peer to peer communication for the benefit of its members and this is the power of the community. When you do post information do so in a professional and businesslike manner and include a link back to your profile within the community. Most social media frown upon links to external websites, as simply an attempt to hijack traffic. By having a compelling profile, readers can (and will) contact you if they are interested in learning more about your services. This is the best scenario, as the client has gotten to know you from your posts in the community, read your profile and may have visited your website before contacting you.

Always Act in a Professional Manner: What you say in a social community defines how people will perceive you. That “tongue in cheek” comment that is obviously meant to be engaging and funny when delivered in person may come off as arrogant and rude when shared in writing.  As a rule you should never use slang, profanity or any other language that could be misconstrued in its meaning. Never get into an online argument with anyone and never “flame” (verbally attack) anyone. Even though you may be 100% correct in your position, any time that you engage in flaming, you simply discredit yourself before the community. If someone attacks you or your company, it is important to deal with the attack without becoming defensive or accusatory. Complete transparency is always the best policy. Should someone go over the line in an attack against you or your company, you should engage an attorney to seek a remedy.

In the final analysis, if you treat your online community with respect and professionalism, your community will reward you with opportunities for business.