Integrity is always important especially if you own and maintain a website. Unethical behavior in using social networking is rampant these days. This type of behavior could damage the integrity of your business and affect the potential for marketing your products or services. On the other hand, there are many methods you can use to market your website that are ethical.
Always respect the privacy of online users. Remember that social networking websites are composed of an actual community of internet users. So, if you are using social networking marketing, you become a member of that community. Your business may have a place in any community but you have no right to invade the privacy of people within the online community. Avoid spamming your friends on your social networking sites.
Online websites such as Facebook and Friendster are being used by various social network marketers to get internet traffic to their businesses. This can be done in an ethical way by directing people to an interesting blog article on your blog site, but spamming internet users using links or images directly to your business website is not ethical. That can eventually gets you banned by search engines and social networking sites.
Avoid spamming with your marketing advertisements for your business website.
Social networking websites are now vigilant on spamming patterns which are considered unethical practice as part of online marketing strategy. Honesty and professionalism with the online communities are very important.
When using social networking websites, always participate with integrity and honesty. First, you need to be a member to participate. You need to register yourself to groups which are relevant to your business. Make friends within the community and show to your co-members that you have expertise in a certain field which is related to your products and services.
The content that you publish on the social networking website must be good quality and relevant to the people on that site. Avoid being too pushy to the online community for your products or services. Avoid misleading information referencing your products or services. Criticizing your competitors is unethical.
Ethical practices in using social networking websites as a tool for online marketing have no specific guidelines; however, it is wise to seek at least some basic knowledge of on media law to know the potential risks for yourself and your business. Just google the term media law and youll find plenty of good information.