Since your question is about not damaging hardware I would say you have to be careful not to damage/bend the cpu pins or the motherboard socket pins.
You should be able to know in which direction to set the cpu as it should have a little arrow on one of its corners... usually the motherboard also has an arrow or a dot on one corner to match that of the cpu.
As a general rule of thumb, once you rotate the cpu arrow/marker to match that of the motherboard, position the cpu right above the board and lower it very slowly/gently until it fits in without any pressure at all.
some suggested videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SpXdXdrrBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2dJvqU2_x4