The days when Facebook was simply a platform for communicating with your nearest and dearest are long gone. The site has an ever-growing variety of uses and ways in which you can share your information, and as a result there are some increasingly common social faux pas which can be a hindrance to your networking. Here’s six ones to avoid:

Transparent Promotion

This is when someone decides to use Facebook for business purposes, and starts treating their friends like potential clients. It’s no good posting a generic: “Hey guys, check out this really great app I’ve discovered!” to friends who are fully aware you’ve just landed a new job at an app development company.  Take the honest approach and speak to people individually – something along the lines of “look, it would really help me out if you could look at/download this app,” is more likely to get people on board. Lesson? Know your audience, because they know you too.

Being too specific with your whereabouts

There’s a very real danger in revealing your plans for business trips or holidays in too much detail on a page that is available to the public. In both your personal and business life (especially if these are closely linked on Facebook!) be careful not to give out specific times and dates as to when your home or business premises will be empty. Sadly, opportunistic thieves can use this information as the green light for exploring an empty building full of valuable possessions.

Using Facebook as your main source for job-hunting

Facebook can occasionally be a great place to find a job, especially if a friend posts a vacancy that’s perfect for you, just when you happened to be looking for something new. But Facebook doesn’t have the professional capacity to be your first and only port of call for finding a job. Besides the constant pleas of ‘If anyone knows of any jobs going…” becoming irritating to friends and family, not a lot of professionals choose to advertise vacancies on Facebook. Get a LinkedIn profile instead, where you’ll find a wealth of information and possibilities.

Abandoning your business page

There is nothing worse than looking up a business on Facebook and finding a company page which last posted an update in 2011. There are so many easy and simple ways to maintain a business page on Facebook that there’s really no excuse for deserting it. It’s off-putting, and it makes it seem like no-one cares about the company. And if no-one else cares, why should potential customers?

TMI – Information overload 

Whilst it can be really effective when companies show their human side, posting updates every five minutes about breakfast, clothes, your journey to work, what you’re having for lunch (and so on…and on….) means that your posts become devalued. Social media users tend to have an in-built mental filter that associates certain users with their repetitive or uninteresting posts. Make sure your Facebook posts have something about them that is of value to the majority of your followers – and send more personal updates to specific people in private messages.

#Humble bragging

Humble bragging is when someone posts an obvious boast about themselves and disguises it through self-effacing comments or a ‘woe-is-me’ attitude. Extreme example: “I’m so jealous of people with normal lives. Working full-time as a supermodel is SO difficult. I never have time to eat anything except fast-food and chocolate and the celebrity parties go on until so late every night that I hardly get any sleep.” If great things are happening with your business, own it and be proud of it, and avoid becoming a humble bragger – you will end up being the reason people discover that they can roll their eyes and click ‘Unfollow’ at the same time.

By Olivia Rose French