Be Careful What You Post on Social Media
Are you trustworthy?
If you know me well, or if you follow my social media pages, you'll know that I'm rubbish at keeping up, I just don't seem to be able to find the time.
But, shall I tell you what I am good at - social media investigative work. With a little bit of digging you can pretty much find out anything about anyone, it's actually pretty scary stuff. And what's the first thing I do when I want to find out about a business, I search their socials. And I don't just mean their work socials, that's right, I check out their personal profiles too. People often link their personal profiles to their business pages and all it takes is the click of a button to dig a little deeper. If I'm hiring someone for work, or for a personal reason, I want to know who it is I expect to see arrive at my door, and I want to know if they appear trustworthy.
Let me give you a recent example
Just today I was looking for someone to come and sort my kitchen out. I found a fantastic looking business; their Facebook and Instagram pages were full of amazing before and after photos, they looked perfect. I typed in their business name to the Facebook search tool and clicked posts (it's that easy) and the owner popped up, and so did their posts and photos, and now I definitely won't be using them. I don't want to see photos of you drunk with pictures of mens genitalia drawn all over you. I don't want to see you pretending to have 'relations' with a marble statue of a bull. I know we all have these sorts of photos (don't we??) but I don't want to see them... MAKE YOUR PROFILE PRIVATE!
As someone who has had a really bad history with suppliers, I'm going to make sure I pick the right one. I know that this company might be fantastic, I know that their work might be top notch and that they might be lovely in person, but FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT. And I'm picking the other guy that looks like he enjoys walks with his dog, and likes to go for meals with his family.
Maybe that's just me.
So, my advice for business owners
Make sure your personal profiles are private. Or if for some reason you don't want them to be private, be careful what you post. Because sleuths like me are looking and it WILL lose you business.
If I search your business name and a picture pops up, and there you are naked, drinking from a bowler hat in the middle of Ibiza I'm gana think, yeah this guy looks like he's having a fun time, but does he look reliable and trustworthy... maybe not so much!
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