When you think of a natural expert in social media, what picture do you get in your head? Is it a gray haired CEO, or might it be someone young? Perhaps someone who is, say, 25? A person who has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr? I bet we’re getting closer. Now, what if that person actually worked for a tech company – maybe a company like Yelp? I’m betting that you would say that this is a person who really knows how to maximize social media. I would, too.
And we’d be wrong. Because the prototype of the person we’re describing is a young woman named Talia Jane, a (former) employee of Yelp. Not too long ago, she posted an open letter to the CEO of her company that went viral. This letter decried her “poor pay” and “starvation living conditions.” She was – appropriately – fired. But not before she was thoroughly debunked using her own social media accounts. You see, what Talia failed to consider – and what too many salespeople fail to consider – is what I call the “open door” effect of social media. Within Talia’s story is a huge lesson for any salesperson who plans to make social media a part of their personal marketing and branding strategy.
As it turned out, many readers of her open letter didn’t simply take her claims of starvation (so bad, she said, that she had to drink a quart of water before bed every night to stave off midnight hunger pain) at face value. They looked at her other social media accounts, and found pictures of her using expensive beauty products, description after description of gourmet cooking of such items as proscuitto-and-brie meatballs (no, I didn’t get the recipe) and a story of her having expensive bourbon delivered right to her desk at work.
What Talia didn’t realize is that social media opens a door into your life. Granted, it typically only opens a door as far as you allow it to (every story above was posted by her, to her own accounts), but on the Internet, everyone can open that door as far as they would like to, and view your life as it really is. When they do, what will they find?
“But wait, Troy,” you say, “I have privacy settings on my accounts. Only my friends can view my pictures.” Yes, that’s a good idea. I have those settings too. But why would you expect that the world stops with your friends? Consider the case of a salesperson that I’ve known for years. I’m one of her Facebook friends.
For years, she had complained about her largest customer. They were a screwed-up company that didn’t communicate well, didn’t deal with vendors fairly, and were such a pain in the rear that she constantly wondered whether or not it was worth doing business with them. She was safe, of course, because none of the decision makers at that company were tied to her Facebook page. She could post whatever she wanted.
Except, that one of her Facebook friends was on a first date, and during the conversation, he mentioned that he worked for this company. The friend, having read for years about how awful the company was, said, “Wow, that must be a horrible place to work.” Asked why, the friend explained that she had been reading about how badly run the company was for years. Then – don’t get ahead of me – she showed her new prospective beau some of the posts. When the new beau got back to work the next day he asked a few questions, and you can guess the rest. Long story short, my friend has one less Facebook friend and one less large customer.
You can be nailed on social media without being the poster, too. During a recruiting search a few years ago, I did a Facebook search on a candidate. His own page was locked down tight – only accessible to his friends. However, his friends had tagged him in a number of pictures and videos that depicted him behaving in manners that were both illegal and showing very bad judgement. Out he went.
So what’s my point? My point is this. If you want to get heavily into social media, you have to carefully manage your own presence. Once you open that door, sometimes you can’t control how far it opens. Social media can be a good tool for building your own brand and your own business, but it has to be used correctly.
