Stick with me through the boorish behaviour on Twitter this week and learn how to open a wine bottle with a shoe. Oh, and if you’re looking to use social media for your business, you need to learn the difference between ‘click-to-buy’ and ‘click-to-share’.

Boorish behaviour on Twitter. Twitter has been a most dispiriting place in the UK this last week. Misogyny, verbal abuse, rape and violence shouldn’t be part of civilised discourse, but as Caroline Criado-Perez discovered as she successfully campaigned to get a non-royal woman on a UK banknote, they are par for the course. The whole ugly business is recorded on Storify here by Kathy E Gill, who concludes the piece thus:

The medium is young. Our skill with it, artless, adolescent, juvenile. How long will it take enough of us to move beyond this tribalism to eradicate such boorish behavior? Or is that even possible?

Speaking of boorish behaviour, the UK’s Home Office have been condemned for first driving what has been dubbed the #racistvan around parts of London encouraging illegal immigrants to go home. The department made matters worse by using their Twitter account to run updates on the number of suspected immigrants they had arrested that day.

[tweet https://twitter.com/charltonbrooker/status/363055659358900224]

Advertising is the cost of being boring. I have occasionally turned down business when it became clear that the would-be client wanted to use social media to generate quick sales (advertise) instead of patiently build a loyal community (share). Jeremy Waite (he of the wonderful 80 Rules of Social Media) explains the difference between ‘click-to-buy’ and ‘click-to-share’ and  reminds us of Zig Ziglar’s motto ‘You can have everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want’.

Social media is (previous ugliness on Twitter excepted) a place where generosity is currency. This week my friend, career coach Nat returned to Twitter and also introduced me to the ideas of Simon Sinek, whose Start With Why site has much to interest anyone looking to underpin their online activities with solid and satisfying foundations.

Lost in emoji. Check out Emojitracker to see how the internet is feeling right this second as it tracks the use of emoji in real time. Anyone with photosensitive epilepsy might wish to proceed with caution though.

Lost your corkscrew? So, let me pass on a gift to you. Watch this video and never have to worry about misplacing that corkscrew ever again. Genius!

(via Open Culture. HT Greg aka Mr Rebecca Chance)

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Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media and product delivery for individuals and small businesses. Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.