Freelancers and home-based business owners continue to debate the value of social media. While there are no doubts that listing your business on social media has benefits, it’s just as important to avoid the mistakes that waste your time.

A strong trading platform ensures that all facets of your trading enterprise are efficient and effective. Social media programming is a valuable aspect of building your business platform. What is a platform? Imagine building a stage for an outdoor band in the middle of an empty field – there is a lot of thought and planning involved in designing the right stage. How much weight will it support and how big will it be? Then there is the cost of supplies, services and skills that you may need to purchase or outsource. When you can finally stand on that stage, you try it out and find that it’s solid: it doesn’t move under you and you don’t have to go back and fix mistakes. Your platform is everything that makes it tick. You can now advance to the next level of your business plan.

There are many dangers that can lurk unseen when it comes to using social media and we cover many of them in Purple Snowflake Marketing. For example: the mistake of getting buried in entertaining and educational posts and videos. Blurring the lines between personal entertainment and business activities can waste a lot of valuable time.

Business owners must carefully analyze who the potential customer is. Having this information on hand will help you decide on visual design, color, images, social media you might use, and actual content. It’s best to determine, at the outset, what your purpose is in using any particular social media outlet. You can use Facebook differently than Instagram, for example.

When signing up for an account on any social media, pay attention to the profile where you can post additional images, color scheme or your logo. Review your profiles at least once a year. You want the information to be up to date, easy to find, attractive to customers, and reflect your purpose for being there. You also want to avoid looking stale, out of date, or no longer in business.

Personal social networks should be viewed separately. During business hours, it’s vital that you don’t even look at their personal pages or reply to messages from them. It’s the same as talking on the phone with your girlfriend all day at work – don’t do it! Staff should be trained with this in mind, and if they post for the company, it should be through their business accounts, not their personal accounts.

Avoid mixing the personal with the business at any level, unless the topic concerns the company, its politics, mission, or personnel. Commercial media should not present your personal activities, personal opinions, political views, cute and silly videos, or pictures of you on vacation, your children, or your family. Remember that the purpose of the social media aspects of the trading platform is to attract and engage with customers and trading networks.

That said, the people who have connected with you on social media are there because they enjoy reading your posts and watching helpful videos. They certainly also don’t want to see time-wasting fluff, inappropriate content, or being “sold” to them all the time. It is very important to find a good balance in terms of where and when to sell to the audience.

Make sure your (and your employee’s) personal online presence isn’t offensive to customers either. If your staff is featured on your website and someone reviews them only to find that your Facebook page is revealing disturbing images, it can (and will) hurt your business.

People also want to be heard, so invite them to share their thoughts and suggestions on your posts or to contact you via private message. Their response to their comments gives them a sense of being respected, recognized and appreciated.

Another advantage of using social media is that every time your site is listed, it becomes a backlink. Every time someone sees your post and follows up on the backlink, your site gains search engine rankings. So when used sensibly, this tool can definitely be your friend and make your marketing efforts a boon.