Friend a Client on Facebook

Do’s:

Check your privacy settings each day…every hour as Facebook is now famous for several episodes of security settings being changed without the user knowing. Do we really want people we are trying to do business with seeing everything we post? Maybe but boundaries are good and good fences make good neighbors and all that. we are making serious mistakes all the time regarding how we use social media but let’s not open ourselves up to it if we know better from the beginning. If we know that we are better off not having a client see how we spend our time or our money we are better off than letting someone see us playing golf for the third time that week when their loan is not approved yet.

The best practice that yet is to not have a social account for anything but business and keep our thoughts and feelings off the internet as much as possible. Turns out some people want you to have a Facebook page and we don’t want to disappoint. But they have no need to know everything that we think, feel, experience. In fact they are probably better off not knowing anything other than what we expressly want to share with them.

Our family, friends, religion, sexual preferences and politics are our business and people have their own view points about all of these very personal things.

Don’ts:

Don’t post personal stuff ever and expect not to alienate a client or two. Someone that is desperately trying to qualify for a home doesn’t want to see our feed while we are skiing on a mountain in Vail. They will not have a feeling of comfort that we can relate to them. They will feel that we are elitists and that they are better off working with someone who they can relate to. People like to see success because they feel that they too can be successful but that does not extend to us, their family or friends. We want to have people around us that we can relate to. It is part of the human condition to envy. Don’t let that get the way of making a tidy living and enjoying ourselves. We just don’t need our clients seeing it.