Four Social Networking Mistakes to Avoid

Social networking is not exactly my favorite task in the world as a freelancer. I know how important it is to network and join communities. I just don’t like doing it.

I’ve learned a lot about social networking over the past few years – what works, what gets you banned, what drives absolutely no traffic to your website. It isn’t rocket science, but for those of you just starting out, here are four social networking mistakes to avoid:

• Don’t combine your personal profile with your professional profile.
  

  Trust me: Your clients don't want to see pictures of you at the bar any more than your friends want to read about your current freelance writing availability. Image: sxc.hu

It’s just too confusing if you have profiles that include both clients and friends. Trust me, you don’t want your clients knowing where you are at every moment in time, no matter how much you enjoy working with them. At the same time, the information you have to pass on to clients is probably fairly boring for friends. On top of that, readers from one site may not respond to information meant to entice readers of another websites you run, so if you have multiple sites, create social networking profiles for all of them.

• Don’t forget that your profile exists.
  

If people reach old information, they may be confused, costing your job or traffic. In addition, social networking is all about the “networking” part. If you aren’t active, the time you took to create a profile has been wasted. You don’t have to update your profile daily if you truly don’t have the time, but you should update it as often as possibly to keep it timely.

• Don’t be infamous.
  

We all dream of being famous someday, but you don’t want to be infamous. On social networking sites, you can easily become infamous if you are a jerk to people. Remember, there’s a way to talk to people without being condescending or mean. Forums are especially popular for snark, so don’t let people bait you. You want people to know your name for the right reasons.

• Don’t create a social networking page that leads to an empty site.
  

Your social networking efforts really don’t mean a thing if they sites they promote aren’t useful to your target market. I’ve fallen victim to links that led to sales pages for unrelated products or sites that were so full of ads that you couldn’t even find the content. If you go to the effort of creating a social networking presence, make sure you’re promoting a site that actually has some value.