I’m launching a new blog series called Netiquette: online dos and don’ts for social media. Have a question? Tweet me with any of your social media and online business questions @kerrierycroft and it might be featured on the blog soon!

A hot topic at the moment is whether or not you should be able to add people to your facebook group without their prior permission. This is one question that is guaranteed to encourage a strong answer in either direction, either from those people who regularly add others to their group and see nothing wrong with it to those people who do not like to be added to groups without their permission.

I fall into the second camp. Daily I wake up to find that I have been added to a number of groups overnight and suddenly my timeline can be full of their posts. I find this really disrespectful and also a total waste of time from the group owners point of view.
The very first thing I do is leave the group. Sometimes I may defriend or unfollow the person who has done it. I may even message them and tell them why it was inappropriate. I have never stayed in a group that I did not choose to join.

Consent is huge in this world. The general rule of being brilliant online is do not take anyone’s personal information (email, phone, Facebook profile etc) and add them to any marketing source without their express permission.

Would you take someone’s email address and add them to your newsletter list without asking them? Hopefully not. Most mailing lists require a double optin and the risk of being seen as sending spam means that most business owners are aware that it is not right to just add someone to a list without permission.

Same applies for a Facebook group. If I choose to join a group I am able to control what notifications I receive, I can choose how I want to see the data that is shared and I can decide if I am indeed their target customer and am interested in what they have to say.

If you add me without my permission you take away that choice. Plus you run the risk of pissing me off. In addition if I am not your target customer then you have totally wasted your time as I am not going to be interested in what your group has to offer me.

The last thing any online business wants to do is to annoy potential customers, or other people in the industry. Look at it in the same respect as an offline business, junk mail and cold calling is frowned upon - yes? Adding people to your mailing list or Facebook group is JUST THE SAME. If you wouldn’t do one then don’t do the other.

I spoke to a number of business owners on Facebook about this subject and with one exception everyone agreed that it was bad manners and bad practice. A few people asked what else they could do to promote their groups and I’ve come up with a short list here that explains to you what you can do to encourage people to join your group.

1 - Message them and invite them. Everyone loves the personal touch.

2 - Post in your group and ask people to invite their friends.

3 - Post on your personal profile and link t your group, invite people to join.

4 - Send out a newsletter to your list and invite them to join.

5 - Include a link to your group in a blog post or in your email signature.

There are many good ways that you can grow your business online and find new customers, spamming people without their express permission is not one of them