Boss not getting it about social media

[Sockypuppet]

So we are all getting specific instructions to post our business cards and flyers on Facebook and WhatsApp one a week.

I know all the reasons that's ridiculous, no need to repeat them to me here. What I need is a way to explain that to my boss.

We're all sort of quietly... not doing it. He's taken to sending reminders.

His own social media is business based. Like his name and the company, nothing personal. I didn't even know till recently he was married.

I try to placate by posting stuff on WhatsApp.

He's a nice guy and it's a good comp3, he's just not getting this. One of us needs a way to tell him that forcing us all to spam personal Facebook accounts won't really help marketing (I assume people will hide my posts) and will built resentment among staff (he tagged me in a post and then I had strangers liking old holiday pics).

Have you had any conversations with your boss about this since you last posted? It seems the situation hasn't changed and as a result you are receiving the same suggestions.

MRex has nailed it.

I work in Marketing and have this discussion fairly regularly. If you follow MRex's plan, it's very hard to argue with the answers. Ie company needs to speak to people who have purchasing authority for printer and photocopier consumables. Employees' personal social media accounts contain none of these people. Therefore that channel is not appropriate.

We have the opposite problem. I work for a well known brand and we have account managers who look after our stockists. Many of them have open social media that anyone can see. They will indentify themselves as working for the company and post images that do look like almost paid for promotions (we work with a lot of influencers). However, as its their personal account they will also post things that are not quite in keeping with the brand e.g. we've had some racy boudoir shots or one who is a militant vegan (I'm Vege myself but she has some strong views) or one who started posting incendiary things about Brexit. As they linked their pages close to the brand it became difficult, even our wonderful HR dept struggled.

If they were influencers then we could choose who we worked with or disassociate ourselves if they posted things we didn't like. In the end we had an honest conversation and in the end decided they could have SM private and post what they like or not associate professionally with the brand and post what they like openly but they couldnt do both.

Maybe point that out? If you are linking yourself with the business and then decide to dedicate your life to ensuring pizza must only ever come with pineapple and you post things like 'death to anyone who doesn't like pineapple' alongside flyers, that will be tricky as its your freedom of speech.

What @crosspelican said. The first thing I thought on reading the OP was, ‘sounds like an upline demand. I wonder which MLM this is”. I think there’s some sort of FB policy (probably not upheld) against posting business stuff on a personal profile which is part of the reason MLM huns never mention the name of the company in their posts. Anyway, as others have said, your social media is your domain and it’s inappropriate to expect you to utilise it for the company’s commercial purposes. He hasn’t really thought this through has he?!

Tell him that its likely to go pear shaped.

So the company business cards on every employees account weekly.

Then one employee has a full on documented and illustrated hen/stag party.

Thats going to look good!

Or an employee leaves to work for a competitor with the old companies cards plastered all over their history.

Or a friend of an employee who's had a bad deal from the company and wants to let the world hear all about it. This makes it easy for them to make an unwelcome noise about it.

When I’ve been faced with work problems such as this as this I’ve taken a solution in as well. So........

A works facebook page, that some employees might like, posting regular news and events. Give someone the responsibility to keep it up to date and relevant.

Buy facebook space so that adverts, news, events can be targeted. It needn’t cost the earth. My son did this until the page got to a critical mass and more or less publicises itself.

I agree with explaining to him that your FB account is personal, not professional, and that you don't believe it is wise to mix personal and professional, to say nothing of the fact that many professions actively ban you from doing so.

I also think mentioning the MLM link is a very good idea as no one likes to be spammed by their friends who've just started one of these - I'm in some local facebook groups and there is a specific ban on posts linked to MLM - as you've said, your friends will likely hide your posts rather than be subjected to them.

The only place that it might be worth posting your business card/flyer is in local community notice board style pages - but that's it. A friend of mine who started up her own company has done that for whenever she's running a course - it works well - but she got booted from the local groups for doing the same thing as it breached their rules.

YOur boss is having trouble realising this because his FB profile is professional only, I would guess. He needs to understand that, just because this is the way HE does facebook, the rest of you use it differently and what he does is inappropriate for your personal facebook accounts.

I don't work in marketing. But a business card doesn't tell me what I need to know about a product or service I want to buy. There's no hook there. I am a member of some online groups it is extremely irritating when people advertise in any way on there. It doesn't make me seek out their business. I'd avoid it. But I love some other forms of social media advertising promotion, I know they are, but they are also fun and do get me clued up in products etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way and finds that. Your boss could do with engaging someone with experience of using social media in a constructive way that will engage

One more vote here for the 'I am sorry but my FB account is strictly personal and I am not comfortable using it for business'. You can also propose to create a page/group to promote your business, if it doesn't already have that, but I wouldn't go beyond that.

My FB is also strictly personal, I don't even add colleagues I work with until I or they leave the company so I absolutely understand your resistance to do this.

@FreedomfromPE I DO work in marketing and agree with everything you've said

God, just tell him straight and simple why you're not doing it.

We had something come through a while ago about what the company expects of us on social media and for us to confirm that we would abide by it and that we should follow them on all platforms and share the information.

I confirmed nothing and ended up getting a stroppy call saying that after multiple requests for confirmation, I was just ignoring them. I asked how I could possibly confirm that I would abide by those rules when I don't use social media whatsoever. The response I got was "but everybody uses it, you must have it". I told them to crack on and try and find me. I never heard another thing.

I think if it were me I'd do the post once per week, but change the privacy settings so that he's the only one who sees it!

When you post it you'll see a dropbox with "friends" in it. Drop it down and click "more" at the bottom and can select so only specific people see it. It won't display any differently for him - maybe add other work people if you're worried about him noticing?

Someone needs to sit down with him and nicely explain that this isn't how social media marketing works.

And maybe signpost him to some courses/resources if he's the one coming up with these ideas. That's simply not how it works.

Another vote for very politely saying that your social media channels are for personal use and not for business.

If our business publishes something interesting/funny/newsworthy on FB I may share it on my personal page but I'm not being told that I must use it for marketing the business.

Reminds me of a previous boss that came into the office with a quote for those magnetic advertising panels that go on cars thinking that we could all put them on our own, personal, vehicles. He was genuinely surprised when everyone flatly refused.

There are some really good suggestions here, particularly the MLM comparison and the Christmas card analogy.

You know your friends and family and you can say to him whether they would welcome this or make them develop negative feelings towards you and the company.

I like the idea of asking for the strategy behind this. Maybe you could offer to work together to come up with aims, for example, does he want to increase reach and awareness or generate new sales? Then you could look at more effective ways to achieve these.

My employer has a twitter account and a LinkedIn page and a Facebook page. I’ve liked/followed all three from my personal spaces. If anything is posted that I feel is share worthy I share it. But I don’t post work things specifically from my personal accounts.

I’ve also had the “social media chat” with an old manager. I was in my second year of work post graduation and fb was fairly new. I’d posted on a Sunday that I was bored (or something like that). And was pulled into a meeting with manager and hr the next day (Monday) and told that I shouldn’t post things like that as it implied that I was bored of my job and what would the businesses clients think?!

I pointed out that clients probably didn’t think to check my Facebook in my maiden name as they wouldn’t know it, and I’d posted I was bored on a Sunday. Which I was. And I wasn’t working. And it was a personal account.

I'd block him tbh. Nobody can tell you what to do on social media, not even your boss. I'm fussy what I post.

Does he have kids who might be able to explain it to him?

i think yo need to phrase it to him that it could actually be very damaging fro the business - like previous posters have stated he would then be linking his business to his employees personal lives - the good, the bad and the ugly.
Does he want his business associated with Xs drunken night out, Ys divorce drama and As extreme political views? its dodgy ground and he may listen to that sort of reasoning more than his employees just saying they dont want to post.
Maybe suggest everyone creates a linkedin profile and uses that for nextworking. Also people can share the company facebook and twitter posts - if they so wish.

Explain to him that its the equivalent of sending a text message to all of your friends with your business card and ask him if he thinks that would be a reasonable thing to do

I'm amazed at the number of bosses/companies who just don't understand how counterproductive spamming is. With advertising, you either target people who have expressly asked for the information (although, even then, not too frequently) or you throw it out there in a non-personal way such as on billboards or media like commercial TV and general web pages where people realise that seeing the adverts is part of the deal of getting the content or functionality without paying directly.

Spamming with and tricking people into seeing your adverts - especially by exploiting their friends and family to do so - is likely to actually hurt your business and give it (and your employees) a terrible reputation. It will make you look really desperate and people will think you're struggling as a company, which is never a good image to give.

As I said, even if there's no trickery involved, bombarding people who have consented to receiving your marketing/updates is also very counter-productive. Send them one message a month and they may well read it with interest, possibly resulting in a sale. Send one once a week and they'll find it annoying or, at best, nothing to stand out for their attention, as there'll be another one along next Thursday anyway. Send a message every day or two and they'll simply unsubscribe, then you've thrown away that very valuable link that they were originally happy to make with a company that they once deemed worthwhile but which they now regard as a needy, time-wasting limpet.

I wouldn't ask him if he'd text all his friends with his business card. He probably would.

Tell him that personal SM is effectively an extension of somebody's phone number.

If you advertise a phone number as associated with a business, you fully expect people to call you asking about your goods and services and, often, touting for your business with professional services they might be trying to promote - invoice factoring, database management etc.

If it's a personal number, only given out to friends and family (or businesses/organisations strictly related to your interaction with them, such as GP appointments or to process/deliver a recent order that you've made), you categorically do NOT want it to be used by people trying to get your money. If your aunt, brother or best friend calls unexpectedly for a chat, you will probably be pleased to receive the call. If it's an ambulance-chasing or double-glazing firm (thankfully no more PPI), everybody accepts that they are an intrusive nuisance and gives them short shrift. There's a very good reason why cold-calling companies are very reluctant to give their company names until they think you might be a potential source of income for them.

I wouldn't ask him if he'd text all his friends with his business card. He probably would.

Yep. The result being that, on receiving a text from him, his 'friends' (by which, let's be honest, we mean acquaintances) will instantly ignore it or give it a split-second glance expecting it to be rubbish, as that's what they will associate him with sending them, rather than seeing his name pop up with thinking with interest "Ooh, it's Paul - I wonder how he's getting on."

It's inappropriate and a breach of trust between friends.