Should I use my personal Facebook profile as a business tool?

Facebook has a reputation for being the place that you go to share the minute details of your life with the people you went to highschool with (whether or not you ever had had any desire to reconnect with those people in the first place.) But is that really what it is and is it a place you should be connecting with people for business?

Facebook is different for everyone

How I use my personal Facebook profile and how you use it are probably very different. Some share very personal information, some are very private and don’t want everyone seeing photos of their families, and some will say anything and everything and don’t care who knows.

My belief is that no matter where you are posting, you shouldn’t post information online that you aren’t comfortable with everyone (including your mother and your kids when they are adults) seeing.

This means that although I post personal information on my Facebook profile, it isn’t information I worry about others seeing. When people request to be my friend on Facebook *I* generally say yes. 

Connecting via your personal Facebook profile

Do I recommend that you connect with everyone on your personal profile? Do I think there’s a value?

There really isn’t a clear answer so here are a few points to remember about personal profiles:

- You can have a maximum of 5000 friends. Though this isn’t a problem for me now, some can hit the maximum amount so would need to pick and choose who they let in.

- There is a subscribe function which allows people to see your public updates in their feed without seeing the more personal information you don’t want everyone knowing about. You can always tell people you don’t know well that they should subscribe to you instead of friending you.

- Social media is about building relationships.  I build the strongest relationships on Facebook.

- Pages are a much better way of interacting with your client base as a business. Profiles are about you. 

What should you do?

Think about why you would or wouldn’t connect on Facebook and know that there will be people who will try to friend you on Facebook regardless of what you’d prefer.  

Once you’ve figured out if there is any value in being friends with people who aren’t actually your friends and if you decide if you feel comfortable with letting people into your inner Facebook world you’ll know what the right decision is for you.

Let’s connect!

Come connect with me on Facebook now. You can subscribe to my public Facebook updates, you can add me as a friend and I’ll probably friend you back if you tell me it’s because you read this post, and most definitely go like the Wellman Wilson Consulting and sign up to our newsletter for more tips and tricks when it comes to social media!

Then leave a comment letting me know if you connect with people you meet for your business with your personal Facebook account.

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