Are your social-media  marketing habits attracting people to your brand or scaring them off? If you  litter your Twitter feed, Facebook page and Pinterest boards with blatantly  self-centered, hard sales posts — or even insensitive, potentially offensive  posts — you could be guilty of sending your followers packing, right along with  their spending cash.

Here’s a short list of notorious social-media  mistakes business owners should remember to avoid and why:

1. Only talking about your products and services. By  now, this one should be a no-brainer. Don’t be that guy at the party who only  talks about himself. Posting status updates, tweets and pins that  narcissistically revolve around your brand only is tantamount to social-media  suicide. You’ll quickly come off as too corporate, self-serving and disconnected  from your customers and their needs. An exodus of followers is sure to, well,  follow.

Small-business expert Steven D. Strauss, author of The Small Business Bible (Wiley, 2012)  suggests following the 80-20 rule to establish a meaningful connection with  customers via social media. That is to say that 80 percent of the content you  post should address your customers’ problems and only 20 percent should be about  your company and what you do.

2. Not playing (sharing) well with others. Instead of  tweeting repeated promotional messages about your products and services, make an  effort to retweet, share and pin your followers’ content often. Also exchange  friendly, conversational tweets with your followers, particularly those who are  significant influencers within your industry. Doing so can encourage a sense of  community within your social networks, boost your brand exposure and help you  earn your followers’ trust.

Share like a champ on Facebook and Pinterest as well by sharing follower  posts and pins that are relevant to topics your target market cares about. For  example, if you sell children’s toys, consider sharing follower and influencer  posts and pins that are of value to parents of young children, like toymaker Melissa and Doug often  does on its  Facebook page. These often include family arts and crafts ideas, fun  playdate themes and printable coloring pages.
3. Posting  insensitive content about sensitive subjects. One of the fastest  ways to get people trash-talking your brand over social media is to post  poorly-timed, offensive remarks about sensitive topics, especially those that  are political in nature and inspire strong emotions.

Fashion designer Kenneth Cole has been guilty of this more than once. Most  recently, the designer and self-described “frustrated activist” published a  tweet that made light of the “boots on the ground” comment U.S. President Barack  Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry used in reference to potentially  deploying ground troops in Syria. The crass remark instantly ignited a firestorm  of angry backlash reply tweets that continue to pile up.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228574#ixzz2i53yLJkA