It is easy to overshare on your social media accounts, both personal and professional. When you overshare on your personal accounts, you run the risk of having some cringeworthy posts to look back on in a few years, but when you do so on a business’ social media accounts, you can harm your reputation and lose customers. To help your brand avoid oversharing and other social media faux pas, today we are going to look at the dos and don’ts of social media for businesses.

Do: Understand the Best Practices of Each Platform

While most social media platforms have similar best practices overall, there are some that are platform-specific that must be kept in mind.

On Instagram, do not post too frequently; if you post too many times per day, you can flood your feed and potentially lose followers. If you have several photos you want to share in a day, you can combine them all into a single post if they are all linked. You can also put some posts in your Story instead of posting them on your feed.

On Twitter, since you have a limited number of characters in each post, do not waste that space by asking your followers for a retweet. Instead, if you post content your followers find valuable, they will retweet it on their own. The exception to this is if you are running a contest on Twitter, and one of the things that lead to entry is a retweet.

On LinkedIn, you want to gain connections, but make sure you do not send out too many connections requests at once. Look for valuable connections that will enrich your profile.

Don’t: Be Too Promotional

While you want your social media followers to be aware of your products and services, you do not want to make your social media content too promotional. Find a balance between your promotional content and content that is educational or entertaining. This will help make your social media accounts more engaging, which can help bring in more followers. You probably already invest in social media ads, which your followers may see, so having your posts also be too promotional can be an overload for your audience.

Do: Keep Hashtags Clean

The hashtag fad has gotten completely out of hand these days, with people adding as many hashtags as possible to their posts. While you can put 30 hashtags in a single Instagram post, that does not mean that you should. Instead, select only the most relevant hashtags for each post and only include those. You can use branded hashtags to help boost brand awareness too.

Don’t: Post and Forget

One bad habit that brands can often fall into is forgetting about posts once they make them. The problem with posting and forgetting is that you miss how people react to your post. These days, people like to engage in customer service on social media, so a customer may leave a question or comment about a product on your post, but if you do not check the post, you will never know, and you might lose that customer because you did not respond.

Without checking your posts, you also will not know what posts resonate better with your audience. This information is crucial to your social media strategy. For example, you may find that some content you post frequently is not getting much engagement, while something else you do not post often gets high engagement. You can then shape your strategies around this information.

Do: Be Responsive

Social media bickering is common but engaging in an argument from your business account is a bad idea. Doing so can chase away customers, and it reflects poorly on your brand. When you get a negative comment on your social media, do not respond right away. Instead, take some time to compose yourself and listen to what the customer is saying before you respond. Then, compose a response that addresses the customer’s concerns in a professional manner that fits your brand’s voice. If the customer tries to escalate the conversation, try to move the conversation into a private message or ask them to email your support team.

Don’t: Buy or Beg for Followers

If you ask for followers in every post you make, or even just regularly, it can come off as a little desperate and can be off-putting to both current and future followers. While you may want to have thousands of followers right away, building your social media following can take time. Buying followers does not benefit you either since you are not getting quality followers who want to follow you.

Build your following organically by sharing quality content that your target audience can connect with.

Do: Credit Sources

If your social media uses a lot of user-generated content or content curation, make sure you give credit to your sources. For example, if you are sharing something created by a user, tag them in the post. Some social networks like Twitter and Facebook can make this easy to do by sharing or retweeting.

Don’t: Feud with Competitors

The way that you interact with your competitors online reflects on your brand. In general, it is not a good idea to bad-mouth or mock your competitors on social media, and most consumers find the practice annoying.

While some brands are well known for publicly roasting their competitors, it is a strategy that does not work for most businesses. The strategy has to be executed with care to make it work, and even then, it is still not recommended.

Do: Make Your Image Positive

Social media is one of the best ways to build the image you want your brand to project. You can craft a positive image for your brand by sharing content that inspires and uplifts your audience, shows the face behind your company, and more! Just make sure you remain authentic and provide transparency if there is a brand crisis.