The Bloggin’ BUZZ

Thoughtful Thursday

Well, the fun and games are over, I have a rant.

I have a profile with Facebook that I keep updated on weekdays and occasionally visit on the weekends.  One of the things that I love about Facebook is the ability for me to delve a little bit deeper into a contact’s personality by seeing what he/she likes to post, comment about and enter into status updates.

I’ve met wonderful people…amazing people with absolutely fantastic stories!

I have a 3 personal rules about connecting with people.

1. Your profile picture must actually be a picture (or a caricature…if it actually looks like you)
2. No weird stuff on your profile page (or your links)
3. I need to have the impression that you have a standard of ethics that I can accept.

Now, this is certainly not a fool-proof system!  I’ve made mistakes.  I’ve connected with people only to click on a posted link within a status update and disconnected as fast as humanly possible on every platform!  But I encountered something last week that just flipped my lid.  In fact, I was so bothered by it that in my conversation with my friend, Michelle Courtney (after the steam had left my ears and cleared the air between us), Michelle suggested that I post a blog about my experience.

Here it is:

Last week, I received a “friend request” from someone in Facebook.  I shook my head when I received it, because while the person did have a profile picture, the name was the name of his company.

A brief (I promise!) word about profile pictures and names: this is called Social Media, not the Corporate Swap!  Use a picture of you so I can see your face, your eyes, your smile, your personality.  Use your real name!!!  Last time I went to a networking event, every person introduced themselves with their name, not their company.  Seriously.

But feeling exploratory, I clicked on the person’s “name” to look at the profile.  And then, it all went downhill.

This person is teaching social media techniques to people.  (Things That Make You Go Hmmm).  Curious as to why this social media “expert” would be using the name of their company as their name (an infringement on the Facebook rules), I sent this person an email asking him why he was using his company’s name.

Quite honestly, I thought the conversation was over and was very impressed when I got a response to my query.

That is, until I read the response.  He stated that had two accounts – one that he uses to promote his business and another that he uses for personal friends.  (Oh yeah, this is ANOTHER infringement on the Facebook rules).

WOW.  And this person is teaching other people how to leverage social media for their business?

Please check out the people you are considering working with, purchasing from and befriending in social media.  You may end up damaging yourself.

Let me know your thoughts about this story by leaving a comment below…

Deidre Hughey

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy these:

What Are People Buying From You?
Why Connect, If You Don’t Agree With Me?
The Future is Ours!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Deidre's Social Media Soapbox, Social Media 101 1/2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.