Social media is absolutely necessary in this day and age. If you are not using facebook or twitter, you are missing out on very valuable, free advertising tools. If you are able to connect with your customers, or potential customers, and drive them back to your website. While these tools are very valuable, and there is no definitive right and wrong way to use them, there are guidelines and things to avoid. I'm going to share with you 3 things to avoid when using social media like facebook and twitter to advertise your business.

1. A Constant Sales Pitch

Too many companies are using their twitter or facebook accounts to spam their users. Consider yourself lucky when you get users following you on twitter or liking you on facebook. These people are using their personal accounts, that they use to keep up with family and friends, to stay in touch with a business. If you constantly bombard them with sales pitches and offers, they are going to quickly stop following you and then you've lost them for good. A good ratio is 80/20. Give them 80% free, useful information and 20% promotion of your business. If you are offering them useful advice or information, they will be a lot more likely to pay attention to you when you've got a good sales offer for them.

2. Lack of Information

Too often do I see companies promoting themselves and participating in the community but failing to provide a link back to their website or a way to get a hold of them. Make sure you have a complete profile on all of your social networks so that if you get somebody looking around your information, they will not be disappointed. Then, at every opportunity, share a link back to your website. You should constantly be looking to get them away from the social network they're looking at to your web page. Be careful not to get too pushy though!

3. Inconsistency

Keep a schedule that forces you to keep updating your profiles and statuses. Just about everybody has started a twitter or a blog only to abandon it a month later. Its easy to be excited about something. Its difficult to be persistent. The persistent ones are the winners at the end of the day. So stay plugged in and never stop updating your social networks. If you forget about it, then your customers will too.

I hope this has encouraged you to get involved in social media. These three tips will help you avoid what makes 90% of businesses fail in this area. Don't forget to make a free website at http_//webstarts.com/!