Etsy is an online portal helping sellers world-wide sell their handmade or antique goods on the internet. I love it because it is full of original handicrafts, and is also a really fantastically maintained site with easy usability.

Etsy is a great example of ecommerce and social media. Apart from their own website and blog, they also appear in social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), and actually make good use of those mediums by highlighting specials or featured items.

Their blog had a fantastic post the other day, cautioning their users on 'social media etiquette'. Basically, the Etsy blogs often feature sellers stories, the comment sections of which are often becoming full of 'I also sell' links.

These comments are also finding themselves on the wider web, on blogs mentioning Etsy, and it is making the Etsy founders uncomfortable because it doesn't fit in with their vision of their 'community'.

The whole concept is very interesting - trying to prescribe marketing behaviour in a community filled with users who want to market their products.

The post is called How Not To Spam While Being Active Online, and is a great article for any online community. They had a great simile for people who randomly comment on blog posts trying to sell their own goods...

You're at a gallery opening, discussing the paintings with the artists and other attendees. Someone bursts into the room shouting, "I MAKE PAINTINGS TOO!" and tosses a fistful of flyers on the floor and leaves.

It is obvious to any PR, marketing or sales person that that is not the way to sell your paintings. Instead, you might want to mingle, admire the art on display, get the names of interested people, and drop very subtle comments or distribute your card to a few key people. Doing this online, on a blog post or forum for example, requires you to read the actual posts, other peoples comments, and leave something insightful yourself. Becoming a useful member of the community first, and selling much later, will ensure that you are welcomed back to that blog again and again, and avoids alienating potential customers.

This 'netiquette' (i dislike that word) is a problem for the wider web, and I assume as people start to delete or ignore spam, those sites who have 'nicer' communities may become more popular than those who don't.