4 Ways Your Personal Social Media Accounts Can Damage Your Business Reputation

Social media is a powerful driver for small business professionals. Social media marketing is one of the best ways to increase website traffic, generate leads, and shorten your sales cycle. Unfortunately, what makes social media so powerful also makes is potentially dangerous for your professional reputation and your business brand.

We spend quite a bit of time focusing on managing commentary on our business pages. However, it is so important to note that this danger is not exclusive to your business profiles.

As small business owners, we often proudly display our businesses on our personal profiles as well. Even if you don’t, managing a small business makes you a public personality of sorts, and you need to be aware of the fact that you are easy to find.

What are the most common pitfalls to professional reputation management on social media, and what can you do to mitigate the risk? Let’s break it down.

#1: Getting Too Personal

You are allowed to have a personal life, personal opinions, and – you know – generally be human. However, remember that everything that pops into your head does not need to be shared online.

If you maintain a personal profile, and you don’t care for censoring yourself – be very diligent about who you accept as a friend. If you must share commentary on politics, or a snide remark about something in your community – keep it private on your personal profile.  Alternatively, you can keep a professional profile, and another personal profile.

What you say on your personal profile will have an impact on your business at some point down the road. After fourteen years in public relations, I can absolutely guarantee it.

Think before you post: Is this really worth posting? Will people understand this comment out of context? If the answer is no, don’t post.

#2: Forgetting that Nothing Ever Really Goes Away on Social Media 

Social media posts can be deleted, but screenshots live forever. While you may have posted something questionable, reconsidered, and removed it – there is a possibility that someone took a picture of that post, and they aren’t afraid to use it.

This is true of both personal and business pages. You can avoid the screenshot “sneak attack” by carefully considering your social media content before you post. Be yourself, but also be truthful and professional. Are your comments bringing any value to the conversation? If not, pass on posting.

#3: Attacking Your Competitors

You’re in business, not the schoolyard. We all have competitors that get under our skin from time to time. However, allowing yourself to be dragged into a “he said, she said” situation can only end badly, and confuse your followers (some of whom may be current or prospective clients).

It makes you look petty and downright unprofessional. Also, it pollutes your personal brand with negativity.

You should be so busy taking amazing care of those customers and running a business that you don’t have the time to get into a tussle with your competitors. Be awesome, be honest, and your fans will take care of the rest. Don’t pick a fight.

#4: Too Much Self-Promotion

As a small business owner or a freelancer, it is absolutely natural to want to promote your work or business. However, remember that your personal profiles are an opportunity to show the human side of your business. If you overwhelm your followers with all business all the time, you risk being marked as a spammer.

Limit the number of times you post about your business on your personal profiles. Focus on being social – and social means variety of content and topics!

Contributor: Erika Heeren is the founder of Heeren Content & Strategy. With 14-years of experience marketing and public relations, she has a professional focus on integrated media spanning 16 different industries.

She works with small businesses and non-profit organizations to provide affordable, professional-quality content development, marketing, and public relations services. Her clients include local small business owners, marketing agencies, public universities, media outlets, Huffington Post-published authors, IT firms, and non-profit organizations.

A military spouse herself, Erika is an outspoken advocate for veteran and military spouse education, employment, and entrepreneurship. She also volunteers as a digital marketing instructor with Treasure Valley SCORE.

Heeren is an award-winning writer and has been featured on NextGen Military Spouse, Veteran on the Move, Wright Stuff Radio, and Social Media Week.