Avoiding the Pitfalls of Social Networking

How Social Networking Can Negatively Impact Your Business

The internet is an impressive way to connect with people. Incorporating it into our business marketing plan is priceless. Even though some participate in business networking forums and others in personal type forums, the end result is that both reflect heavily on a business. Therefore, it is important to realize the potential impact.

Personal social sites are a great way to stay in touch with family and friends, but remember it is accessible by others. This includes people with whom you do business. Even though you may have separate sites set up for business and personal, someone can easily access the information on your personal site prior to doing business with you. For example, many HR departments Google candidate names to obtain additional information about a candidate during the hiring process. So why wouldn’t a CEO turn to Google before entering into a business relationship with a person or company?

Keep any written content on the web professional. Someone wanting to do business with you does not want to witness you using vulgar language, discrediting another person or business on a forum. Once it is out there, it is hard to get it back. Also, any pictures posted should be kept to ones you would feel comfortable sharing with your Grandmother. Log-in names should also be kept professional and not use names or terms that might hurt your image.

Blogs are a popular way to add frequent content to your site. It drives traffic to your site and is a useful tool to inform your visitors of issues and trends. Using blogs to promote your business should mirror your type of business and your website. Formal businesses, such as financial planners, should keep their content focused on business recommendations, financial advice, etc. If you have a website geared toward children’s items, it would be appropriate to have your website more light-hearted.

Sharing links on blogs is another popular way to increase website traffic, but caution should be taken with whom you link to your blog. If they change their blog content and it ends up being something racy or provocative, you probably do not want to be associated with that type of activity.

There are so many forums out there. We tend to become comfortable with communicating with a particular individual or group of people. Even though you may feel like you know these people, remember, you really DON’T know them. Be careful with the information you are sharing. Asking for feedback regarding a business decision should be proceeded with caution as to not divulge privileged information. Some people participate in these forums to capture ideas from people who have invested so much time and energy into their product development.

It is important for PR purposes to utilize social networking sites, but it is just as important to be smart as to how you utilize them.