Messaging Via Social Media Sites

Remember when you first got on Facebook or LinkedIn and someone messaged you from within that social media platform?

Since the message likely came through your email, your first response (if you were like me), was to attempt to just hit reply and write them back via email. You might even have written out a reply in an email and hit “send,” only to realize that they weren’t going to get your message that way – you had to go to the site from which they sent it and reply from there.

Going into the site just seemed so inconvenient. You likely were saying to yourself – why can’t I just answer this from my email account? That’s where I received it. Or, why couldn’t that person just have sent me an email?

Those of us who didn’t “grow up” with social media may still resist using it to directly message our family, friends, and/or business colleagues.

However, more and more of those people, especially it they’re under 40, use social media sites to send private messages rather than using email. This trend has led some pundits to bemoan “the death of email.” Yet, email is still alive and well, though that is the subject for another blog post.

As more and more communication is migrating to these social sites, you might benefit from some suggestions about messaging via Facebook or LinkedIn.

 

5 Tips for Messaging Via Facebook and LinkedIn

• Ask your new Facebook friend or LinkedIn connection if they prefer to communicate via those sites for private messages or if they prefer traditional email. Especially if this is a business connection, it’s helpful if you can adapt to their preferred mode.
• Set aside time each day to handle this social media “correspondence.”
  • For example if you see you have four or five LinkedIn messages, log in and double click on the envelope icon to take you into your LinkedIn inbox.
  • Then click on Messages on the left hand side.
  • Now you can just cruise through your messages, either responding to or deleting each one individually.
• If you feel you are getting too many notifications via email about messages waiting for you in your Facebook and/or LinkedIn account, change your notification settings in the site. If you stop receiving those emails, it’s even more important that you take a bit of time each day to log onto each site to see if there are any messages waiting for you.
• If the message you get via Facebook was also sent to others, be aware that when you hit reply, all the others included in the message will see your response. If you are overwhelmed with seeing the responses of the others, then you can leave that conversation by clicking on Actions and choosing “leave conversation.”
• If you have a message you want to send out privately to a number of your LinkedIn connections, you can send the same message to up to 50 connections at a time. Just be sure to unclick the box at the bottom that says “Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses” as most people prefer to keep this information private.

When considering these decisions it is wise to take into account the privacy policies of each site. For example, LinkedIn and Facebook can see everything you send through their site-based message systems. For this reason, many people prefer to keep their private communications private by connecting and then conducting communications through email.

 

How About You?

Do you like to send private messages via LinkedIn or Facebook rather than email the person? Or do you still prefer email? If you are more email-oriented, in what ways have you adapted (if at all) to those who communicate with you privately via social media sites?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 50 and up, to become more effective using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. She works with business owners, nonprofit organizations, retired people, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.