Asked to use personal social media to promote work

[Sockypuppet]

I'm not an owner or partner of my business. Just an employee. People in my life know where I work.

Boss/owner regularly asks us to use our personal WhatsApp and Facebook accounts to promote his business.

Loads of us are just quietly... not doing it. If I spam my job to my personal contacts they'll just mute/hide me.

Is this a normal thing now?

Sophie the thing is, it's terrible for marketing anyway! There's no way to police the kind of accounts the product gets linked to!

Does he run the rest of his business as unprofessionally as his marketing strategy?

Tell him that he'd do far better to buy a strategic advertising campaign on those platforms, which will bring in customers than you circulating his ad to your 200 or so random mates.

Ha, our workplace tells us in no uncertain terms not to promote our workplace, in fact we are not even supposed to have it as our place of work on Facebook.

If he challenges you, just say you aren't comfortable doing so and you prefer to keep your private life separate from work.

Don't do it. I was asked to use my personal FB to recruit. Unfortunately I left myself logged in and was off sick. They read all my personal messages on messenger and even printed some out if I had spoken to my friends about work. I left.

No me neither.

And again, what to say when boss asks why?

So far I have a couple of lines up my sleeve (if directly challenged) such as, "My social media is for family". Or "I haven't got a work phone and my personal phone is switched off most of the day."

And personal safety, because I've had clients get my personal number and then ask me on dates. That's not actually a big reason (because I just say no thanks and block) but it might be the easiest to articulate.

Surely the more work the company gets the better for the employee, sharing something once in a while, and asking your friends to share isn't any great hardship. I'm not saying spam your own Facebook, but sharing it once every couple of weeks won't do any harm.

Thanks for the ideas!

Nooooooo! Not right on several levels. The company has no control over the message or what happens to responses. The employee is doing extra, unpaid, out-of-hours work in a field they may not be trained for and people's private online accounts are being polluted by advertising.

The boss is wrong to ask this and put employees in such a difficult position.

You might as well go MLM and be done with it.

If you have your settings to friends only, how is he going to knows whether or not you've done it?

So why doesn't he have/create work social media accounts?

Nope. Has this same stuff a few years ago. I also always refused a work phone. My personal life was in my life. My working life was seperate. Both ways.

I'd be a little bit worried about the business. It sounds like rather a desperate strategy to me, especially if instead of just being a casual suggestion there is increasing pressure.

My boss treats Facebook like her LinkedIn page and it’s cringeworthy - all ‘Great to be hosting...’. What does he expect you to do? Run adverts? I’d post something about work if it was really interesting - if they were using our building to film Peaky Blinders or something, but otherwise I rarely mention work.

I’d go for “are you sure that’s a great idea sir? We’re coming up to a really divisive General Election and some employees might reasonably express political opinions on their Facebook one way or another that would alienate half your customers if the company were associated with them.”

tell him he needs a proper social media marketing strategy.

And that Facebook advertising is very cost effective.

I work for a charity and we were asked to use the birthday fundraiser option to ask for donations for it on our birthdays on our personal Facebook accounts! basically saying here friends please all pay my salary. I haven't done it it's too awkward

And personal safety, because I've had clients get my personal number and then ask me on dates.

That's a massively important reason and an extremely good example of why keeping personal and professional life separate is a good idea.

I work for a local authority and have sometimes been asked to promote what the Council is up to. I have always refused. I'm a town planner and don't particularly want to remind my friends that my department is the one that sometimes makes unpopular decisions. Our communications team just simply don't get it because their entire role is chatting about what the council is up to. But those of us who have to make unpopular decisions are less keen on having our faces plastered all over the council's social media presence.

I run our social media at work. I have been asked by 'the boss' to get people to like us and follow us - and I've done that - but I think it should be up to the individual. I personally haven't liked my work with my FB account or my twitter feed as I keep them separate.

Saying that, there are people at work who I know regularly like us and follow us.

Nope, I will barely acknowledge who I work for on social media, I love my job but I keep things very separate.

He sounds like he needs to hire somebody to explain to him the 101 reasons why that's a shit strategy.

I’ve been asked the same at work, I just say I doubt my social media friends would be interested! And also that I do keep work life separate from everything else. And barely use Facebook these days... several reasons!

I have never even had colleagues as Facebook friends. I separated work from home life to that extent.

I keep all social media and work completely separate.

And always will.

It's called SOCIAL for a reason.

I would tighten sm right down so he can't see it. If asked simply say you have binned off fb for personal reasons.

And personal safety, because I've had clients get my personal number and then ask me on dates.

There is your answer. That is a very important reason not to share where you work on social media.