DO YOU really need to be found on Facebook and followed on Twitter? Too often I land on a website where the first thing I am met with is a series of icons telling me to “like” a dormant Facebook page or follow some Twitter profile with no avatar, no tweets, no description and no following.

So why bother having that web presence first place?

In a desperate attempt to be “in with the times”, people and companies open social media accounts but fall down by choosing to portray themselves online as lazy and uninteresting.

These social media profiles are often the first impression a potential customer gets of you or your business. And if you get it wrong at the first point of call, you could lose them immediately.

I recently visited a website where, after starting at the logo on the left-hand side of the page, my eyes moved across to the right where in big letters I read “Contact us on Twitter and Facebook!”

So, I immediately left the page to “contact” the company through their social media channels, only to discover they had never been used.

Why would you want the first point of contact for your company to be on another website which bears no resemblance to you or your company and where you don’t listen or have any idea of what is happening?

It is like directing your customers to call a number that leads to an unplugged phone in the middle of a deserted room, where a monkey could potentially break in and respond.

One could argue that perhaps the person wouldn’t have found you or your company in the first place had you not created the social media accounts, but time and time again I see questions and comments directed at people and companies on social media sites that are left unanswered – doing far more damage than good.

Everyone is striving for people to stay longer on their websites, so why immediately send me to some other site where I will be distracted by status updates and tweets and forget all about what I was doing on your site in the first place?

If you insist on being on social media sites with no intention of using them properly, at the very least add a description, avatar and a link back to your website.

And please don’t proclaim so proudly on your homepage that you are on Twitter and Facebook when you clearly aren’t. The social channels can be dangerous places to venture into without a plan. Tread cautiously or don’t tread at all.

Emilia Flockhart is a communications executive for Gateshead’s Codeworks and is @emiliaf on Twitter