Social Media, recently and over the past few years, has gotten bigger and bigger. With websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many others, a whole new path of interaction for businesses and their recruiteres has been opened. It gives companies a chance to make new connections with potential passive contacts. Just like with anything, there are many great ways it can be utilized by recruiters, but there are also a number of potholes to look out for if you want to make sure to use social networking in the best way.

1. Spam. A lot of social media websites lend themselves to being used constantly. While tweeting or posting what you’re doing every ten minutes might be okay for a personal account on one of these websites, if your business does the same, people will get annoyed fast. If your tweets are so frequent that they fill up the feeds of everyone following you – whether or not the content you are posting may be relevant or interesting – they will get annoyed and could be compelled to remove you from their feed. Like with all things, moderation is important.

2. Inactivity. On the opposite side of posting too much is not posting enough. Once you make an account on a social networking site and people know that you are there, if you abandon it, it is likely that potential candidates, customers or contacts will see it and assume that you are no longer in business, or some other unfortunate outcome.

3. Impersonal. Just like with the two sides of the coin when it come to how much content you post, there is the question of what content you post. I have seen Facebook pages for companies that have little to no information save for a link to their company’s website and a few words. While this may seem more stoic and businesslike, it leaves a lot to be assumed. Having some information about the company, and even the people who work there, adds a personal touch and as long as it is done tastefully, can help keep people revisiting your page.

4. Too personal. The other side of this coin is posting too much personal information. It’s endearing to see a post celebrating someone’s birthday or something that is as much of a milestone as that, but if too much is posted, such as a comment about office shenanigans multiple times a day, it gives an air that is not as businesslike as most people prefer.

5. Lack of interaction. Remember that just posting tweets or updates isn’t the only way to take part in social networking, but discussing and interacting with others who are posting on their own and your pages as well can make you more interesting to them and others who see their pages.

I hope that these five things to look out for will help you better manage your social networking now and for the time to come. To stay at the edge of issues on HR and staffing, be sure to subscribe to the Human Capital Supply Chain Blog.