Should Your Business Contacts Be on Facebook?

This is a dilemma that many people face when they receive friend requests from their business associates. In fact, some people deliberately avoid signing up with Facebook because they do not want to face this dilemma. Those who do not want business associates as their Facebook friends commonly express their desire to keep the business world separate from their personal world. Some people are even critical of others who do not keep the two worlds separate, seeing them as cunning businessmen who view every friend as a potential business.

I believe this is a symptom of the corporatization of our culture. A hundred years ago, most people assumed that they would be running their own business one day, either by starting their own from scratch or by taking over the family business. In this type of small-town environment, you did business with people who lived in your own neighborhood. They were both friends and business associates. There were no clear lines. After all, wouldn’t it be nicer if we could do business with our friends and mutually benefit as a result? Why do we feel the need to separate business from personal?

Here is my theory: It’s because working for a corporation forces you to create two separate personas, and because you don’t like your own business persona. Wanting to keep the two worlds separate is an expression of self-hatred. When you work for someone else, you are not allowed to be who you are. You are representing the company you work for. In other words, you are acting a role in the script written by the corporation. Every company has a culture with its own values, codes, standards, philosophies, objectives, etc.. You are getting paid to represent those things. When you are in the army, you have to kill people even if you are against harming others. The same holds true for working for corporations; you are not going to agree with everything they believe in. You often have to put yourself aside and act in the interests of the corporation. That’s what you are getting paid for. This is fine while you are still young, and still learning about the world and the life in general, but sooner or later, you have to be yourself and express yourself as you naturally are. That’s what evolution would want you to do too. Otherwise, you will eventually forget who you really are.

It’s true; some people do see every friend as a potential customer, and they don’t drop the business persona ever. I agree that this is tiresome and annoying, but the reason why this is annoying is because they decided to let their business personas take over their true selves. This is what most people assume when they see someone who does not draw the line between business and personal; they assume that the business side takes over the personal side. But it does not have to be that way. What if you let your true self take over your business persona? That is, you eliminate your business persona altogether. This is basically what happens in a small community. Everyone knows everyone else. One person’s problem (personal or business) is everyone’s problem. In such a community, there is no point in creating a business persona.

Our culture now has become so corporatized that we have forgotten what it is like to be ourselves. We simply assume that keeping up two separate personas is a requirement in life. We’ve accepted it as a reality and learned to cope with it. But, deep down, we don’t like it. We crave to be ourselves, so we try to guard our private world as if it’s a sacred sanctuary. And, when someone from the business world tries to invade our sanctuary, we feel repulsed. We need a space to be ourselves and stop acting a role in the corporate theater.

But, here is the good news. I believe this concern about keeping up two separate personas is overblown. It’s like the soldiers who were hiding in a jungle for years after the end of World War II. Many people still believe that putting up a generic business facade is the best way to succeed. Not just individuals, but many businesses still believe this. They try not to offend or turn off any potential customers by presenting themselves in the most generic and conservative way possible. I believe that this is a dangerous strategy in today’s digital world where filteration of information is super-efficient.

Let’s suppose you need to print new business cards for yourself. You know how efficient the search engines are these days, so you wouldn’t just search for “printer”. You would search for “business card printer”, because a company that prints business cards all the time would probably be cheaper than a generic printing company who prints anything and everything. Well, you know that you could be even more specific. So, you search for “business card printer in New York”. Guess what? Even that returns too many results. So, you want to be even more specific. You then search for “eco-friendly business card printer in New York”. Now you have a more manageable number of choices. Who knows, you might even be able to find an eco-friendly business card printer in New York who voted for Obama, if that’s what you want.

Let’s think about what we just did. Every time we tweaked the search words, we essentially eliminated businesses that present themselves generically. The more generic they are, the quicker they get eliminated. This is the world we live in now. So, if you put up a generic facade that does not offend or excite anyone, you get eliminated quickly. If this is true, why bother trying to put up any facade? Why not just be yourself so that other likeminded people can find you easily and quickly?

Let’s get back to our original topic of discussion. Facebook can be a great business tool if you did not put up a business persona, that is, if you insisted on being yourself. Then, you can accept any friend requests. I often write and post things that are potentially damaging to my business, but I go ahead and do it if I sincerely believe it, because there will always be a small number of people who share the same opinion or view. It’s OK even if a lot of people are offended by it because it’s better to have a few people who really like me than to have hundreds of people who do not think anything of me. Being generic is the most dangerous thing to be in today’s world.

—posted by Dyske   » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page