Seven Ways to Ruin Your Reputation On Facebook
ByFacebook is a wonderfully robust social networking site. There are tons of ways to connect with people and actually get to know them; you can write on their wall, send them messages, start a dialogue in a group.
However, there are plenty of ways to make yourself look unprofessional and turn people off. Here are some of them:
1. Invite dozens of people you don’t know to be friends. Don’t send any of them personal notes telling them why they should be your friend. They should all be grateful you wanted to be their friends. Don’t follow up by writing on the wall of new friends. It’s about how many friends you have, not how well you connect with them.
2. Send all these new friends flower requests and diamond requests every day. There are so many different requests, use as many as you can – daily.
3. Search YouTube and other sites for hilarious sexually explicit videos. Place them on your profile page to show off your sense of humour.
4. Every day there are new apps being written for Facebook. Add them all to your profile page. The more, the merrier.
5. Track down photos of you at parties where you over indulged and post them on your profile to show you’re a fun loving person.
6. Include a weird photo of yourself as your profile picture. Maybe you in a bikini, or with Halloween makeup. Better yet, include a cartoon, a photo of your dog or of some famous person. Don’t want to appear too professional.
7. Write posts promoting your products and services on all your friends’ walls. Don’t waste time chatting or getting to know people. You’re here to make money!
Of course I don’t want you to do any of these things. If you are using Facebook as a marketing tool, remember this is social media. Spend your time trying to build relationships with people and you’ll do fine.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Last weekend one of my Facebook friends commented on one of HER friends photos. I got to see the photo because that’s how Facebook works. The photo was a very risqué shot of a drunk young man wearing nothing but duct tape (tribute to Red Green???).
Can you imagine if I was his employer or future employer or one of his clients????
Jacki,
Yikes!
In fact, I’ve heard that many corporate recruiters check out potential job applicants on Facebook first thing. If there are photos or comments about parties, drinking or drugs they toss the resume without ever giving the applicant a chance.
A good rule of thumb: don’t post anything on Facebook (or anywhere online) you wouldn’t want your boss, a client or your mother to see.
Andrea
Since your wonderful post “How to Grow A Useful Facebook Network” I have received five friend requests as noted in point 1, and have sent a reply saying “…if you’d like to let me know how we can help each other, I’ll be happy to consider your request.”
One person apologized for inconveniencing me; the others haven’t responded at all. Which just proves that for them, it’s all about the quantity, not the quality of the online relationships.
Amen!! I routinely mentor young professionals entering my field on the dangers of Facebook pages to their job seeking efforts. Employers do search the Internet before they call applicants. Who wants to miss a chance at a plum job because they thought it might be ‘fun’ to share way too much information about themselves and their extra-curricular activities? If an employer is looking for someone with maturity they can send out to dinner and drinks with clients, what will all those ‘look how drunk I got last night’ photos, or ‘See what a hottie I am?’ shots convey? If you want to be seen as a professional, you have to present yourself as a professional, both in person and on-line.
[...] is a slightly different matter and I may start changing my policy. If you’ve read my previous blog post on the subject, you know I hate those stupid request apps (zombies, are you hot? etc). I’ve [...]
haha…Good one Andrea !
Valuable tips.
Wonderful site. Plenty of useful info here. I’m sending it to a few friends ans also sharing in delicious. And obviously, thanks for your effort!