Social Media And Messaging Can Be Taken The Wrong Way

Social media and messaging can cause arguments!

Thanks to today’s world of social media and messaging, we can form opinions far too quickly and misinterpret messages. On occasion problems are amplified by our imagination and our friends can encourage us to see the worst. Much like the video above, misunderstanding our ‘virtual,’ public communications with people, can cause us real World problems especially if we use them for business.

This article is to remind you that social media and messaging communications can be taken the wrong way! 

Before you read on I encourage you to watch the video above until the end.

The mistakes that can be made when we are busy, under the influence of alcohol or the pressures of our working lives are really serious.

Misreading comments on social media and getting jealous or embarrassed is only natural! It is similar to someone looking at your girlfriend or boyfriend in public; some take it as a compliment, whereas others take it as an insult and become confrontational or withdrawn and upset. When putting your life into perspective remembering who you are going home with at the end of your date and thinking about who spends the majority of their leisure time with YOU in the ‘REAL WORLD’ certainly helps.

Realizing the context of the conversation and subsequently reacting responsibly, monitoring what is being said without including our comment or like into the equation may be on many occasions the best thing to do; as opposed to reacting in the wrong tone, that can be misconstrued by the person who commented in the first place. Taking no action can be difficult when we love our partner and hate to see people flirting with them or at least engaging in a fun way. Social media and messaging can be a bad nightmare for our relationship and personal brand if not fixed fast.

Social Media And Messaging

You do not know who is watching you on social media; it is public and your next big client or affiliate partner may be watching, or even be one of the people who has been commenting, perhaps they are from LinkedIn!

If used for business social media can help your business to flourish

When being observed from the outside these ‘social media’ relationships may seem close or familiar; they are intended to be friendly, to enable the key business drivers that clearly sit behind the person’s profile.

Many who DO ‘social media’ for local business are experts in their areas of business & in conversing with local people and people who they know through friends of friends, this is different to making sales globally in some respects.

Different age groups and cultures may communicate differently; when building a global presence online a business that involves people from all nationalities, it must be noted that people’s styles can be seen as somewhat flirtatious and could cause many problems for ourselves and for others if not addressed.

We can destroy our friendships, our relationships and damage the growth of our partners business relationships, by reacting to conversations with our friends. Friends can encourage us to see what problems we have in our relationships rather than telling us to trust our partner or spouse.

Social media and messaging causes these problems

  1.  We miss the majority of the conversation or engagement and jump to conclusions, we are not in a real social setting or environment, so cannot have a fun bit of banter with the person.
  2. Small gestures can take on a bigger meaning, even if they are not intentional, they can easily be misconstrued, create lots of anxiety and arguments if not resolved on the phone or in person.
  3. We lack control as to the context of a comment or a like and both can be misconstrued, our partners or even their friends, can make it worse by bringing their attention to a comment or a like, which ordinarily was completely harmless.
  4. Reputation or credibility of people can be damaged by knee jerk reactions on both parts, especially when commenting in response to what they deemed a flirtatious or unsuitable comment or smiley face, which was completely innocent.
  5. Relationships can have difficulties from the substantial unnecessary stress and arguments caused just because of jealousy, which is ridiculous.
  6. Friendships can also have difficulties due to the misinformation being spread or even via heated text or direct message conversations.
  7. Social media distorts reality people viewing your profiles from outside can get confused with the ‘fantasy’ world that seems to exist.

How can you make social media work for your relationship

Facebook friends

I have a very good friend and he actually does not have his current girlfriend as a Facebook friend, he only is friends with ex girlfriends. For ages I thought he was mad, but actually understand his reasons now as I can understand the stress social media can cause us.

Facebook pages

Having a page for you as a person can also be difficult for your relationship, all the posts are public, whilst you can delete comments if your partner is commenting in response to a friendly or fun comment; it can seriously damage your relationship, your personal life, your personal brand and your business.

It can seriously damage your professional relationships, restrict the growth and success of your social media channels, affiliate programs or campaigns you are running.

Discuss the problem or it will get worse fast

You must have a voice conversation with your partner about the situation, explain and reassure him or her that you are the one they get to take home at night.

Have trust and faith in the strength of your relationship, if your partner has a problem with how you conduct yourself online, it is usually caused by other people, who don’t understand your strategy, your career and the strength of your relationship

  1. Keep negative comments to yourself, even though they may be seen as fun by you, if they are read in the wrong context, they will damage your partners career, business and your relationship.
  2. Make sure you discuss your partners feelings and take them on board. You don’t have to change what you are doing, but you do have to be sympathetic to their unhappiness and explain why you do what you do.
  3.  You need to show that you care, just by sending a note or a message first thing in the morning and making the time for this is important to make sure they are happy, sometimes the little things in life become the big things if we ignore them and pretend we are happy.
  4. Buy them a small gift, flowers and wine are always good for the ladies and chocolates or beer for the gents.
  5. Leave them a voicemail, letting them know you care about them, send them a picture, write them a little note and leave it somewhere, they will see it when they are least expecting it.
  6. Understand there may be other underlying problems with your relationship which need to be discussed, in particular if both of you have been cheated on in the past or had long term relationships, there may be certain things that need to be talked about and time can be a great healer.
  7. Remember that stress at work does exist, being under stress does not give you a get out of jail card, but it should be remembered that the time you could of spent talking about the small problem on the phone, will cause you to have a bigger problem if ignored.
  8. “It’s harder to raise issues directly with one’s partner because it can lead to questions like why one was looking, or feelings of guilt. Partners can be hesitant to discuss their feelings about social networking sites because it might reveal that they are looking. This hesitation can stymie further communication.” Quote Psychology Today

Thanks for reading, if this has resonated with you I would appreciate it if you shared my article and your insights in how you keep your relationship strong, no matter what happens on your channels.

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