Professional networking on Facebook is indeed a tricky thing. If you ONLY add people who you know, you’re limiting the obvious potential to grow your list of trustworthy business contacts. If you say yes to every Friend Request you receive, you could end up giving unsavory characters access to your friends and relatives, your children, your home, etc. Or, maybe you wind up with a computer virus from one of those “fake” profiles.
Here’s my advice to those who want to meet new, quality people on Facebook while avoiding trolls, harassers, hackers and weirdos.
When to Ignore the Friend Request
If you suspect or know the Profile Picture is a fake one.
How would you be able to tell this? Well, I actually had a woman friend request me, and I know for a fact that her photo was a stock photography image. I recognized her from istockphoto.com - and I think I had even used her picture in a blog post for one of my clients!
Granted, there could be a real person behind the stock photo, and maybe they’re completely nice - just want to keep their identity private for reasons I state above. But I don’t know that. So until I find evidence confirming that other people who I trust know this person and have done business with them, I’m going to steer clear. You might opt to take the risk, but if someone is hiding — one must ask why?
If you’re female, and the man who has Friend Requested you ONLY has other women on his list - and there are hundreds of them.
This JUST happened to me. I got a Friend Request from a man I didn’t know, took a look at his profile, saw that he had more than 600 women on his list, and promptly declined the offer. This just seems very suspicious to me. Even if he’s simply a nice man who enjoys looking at women — where is the evidence of him being a balanced and well adjusted human being? “Normal” people have friends of both sexes, some even have family members attached to their Facebook profiles. It is just safer for a woman to avoid a person like that — and shame on this man’s collection of 600+ women for not noticing or caring!
If the name and picture on the profile is just a branding message.
I think some people who have a branding message as their profile name might be “okay.” You might click “Accept” to learn that there’s a real girl or guy behind it all, and he or she just got a little carried away with the branding. But if you’re screening potential friends, I would be cautious about this. I got a Friend Request from someone who is evidently in real estate. His or her profile photo was of a house, not a face, and his “name” was “DreamHome” or something like that. Doesn’t seem like he’s ready to be genuine about who he is. If I want to go house shopping, I can visit Google, so… this person doesn’t get added to my list.
If the profile is riddled with MLM.
If the only thing you have to say is that you’re selling Acacia miracle beverages, I’ll move along, thanks.