You know what you’re supposed to do in social media. You’ve read the guides, the blog posts, the articles. But here’s a list of what you don’t want to do. They’re the common social media mistakes that others have made so you don’t have to.

Using the same strategy on every site: Facebook is not MySpace. Twitter is not Wordpress. Every social networking site is different and you need to create a different strategy for each site you decide to engage in — one that is customized to that site’s specific rules and code of conduct. Trying to run a one-size-fits-all approach will limit your ability to be successful anywhere.

Not measuring it: If you’re not going to come up with ways to measure your social media efforts, don’t jump in. Before you get into social media, know why you’re there and what you plan to get out of it. What are you looking for? Increased buzz over a product? Better brand awareness? Blog subscribers? Traffic? How are you going to measure these goals? Whatever your metrics are, make sure you’ve identified them before you throw money into programs you’re not tracking. Otherwise you’re fishing in the dark

Losing potential conversation through inactivity. A social media presence requires constant attention. The reason so many businesses fail on social media platforms is not because they put too much in, but that they fail to give enough to feed their audience. A social media presence is only as valuable as the amount of effort put into it — a lazy profile is worth less than no profile at all.

Affecting your relationship with current clients .There is such a thing as having too much information, at least when you are running a business. While platforms like Twitter are great for running promotions, when used as a personal blog they can be devastating to your business’ image. Think about it this way — would you want every action of your day reflecting on your business?

There is a simple solution for this; tweet less and do more. Instead of tweeting about anything and everything, limit your social media output to things that can really help your business. When it comes to sustainable social media marketing, less is more.