I love the fact that with social media I get to know business owners. I can learn not just about their businesses but also about them personally. Sharing this type of connection builds greater trust than any brochure, logo, or company mission statement could. But making a personal connection means that you also have to be careful what you put out there.

You see it happen on Twitter all the time, especially when people start talking about sensitive topics like politics or religion. A few months ago there was a huge protest in Toronto. A group was trying to bring attention to what it believed was our country’s lack of involvement in what it viewed as a great injustice on the people of another country. I watched and observed closely, not to see people’s opinions on the issue but to see what kind of opinions were coming out under company accounts. A “company account” is one that you run for your business. You see, sadly, many comments on Twitter that could be considered racist, ignorant, and bigoted. Not exactly the things you want related to your company.

The problem is that sites, especially ones like Twitter, are reaction-based. They are emotionally driven. And in the height of emotional issues, you often need to step back for a moment and think. Never put something on a social media site (or anywhere online) that you do not want seen on a billboard with your name, your picture, your company logo, and your phone number on it, with your mom driving by while sitting shotgun. Even if you delete something on the Web, the Internet never forgets.

As I mention all the time, I see many men writing things casually on Facebook and Twitter that make me feel greasy, whether they are inappropriate comments about a picture or general statements that they think somebody wants to hear. Again, if you want a billboard with your company’s name on it and you’re saying the line “love your new sweet haircut hot stuff, would love to get me some of that,” then by all means, Casanova, go for it.

Sometimes negative experiences are not our fault. Let’s call this the involuntary experience gap. Perfect examples of this are phishing scams or being a victim to a virus and spreading it around to your friends and followers without knowing it.

It’s happened to all of us.

The problem is that now it is just so easy to spread certain things along social media channels. Scammers take advantage of this by sending something falsely in “your name.” People who trust you will open these messages without thinking twice and then keep the scam going. In a phishing scam your account is taken over after you fill out your name and password on a phishing site. It looks like you’re logging into a trusted site, but in reality it’s a fake to grab your log-in information.

I have found that people are usually forgiving about this kind of thing as long as it only happens once. But right or wrong, your fault or not, it is still a reflection of your company and part of your market’s experience with you. That is why it is so important to educate yourself and anyone who uses your social media accounts about phishing scams and viruses and how they can be spread around and prevented.