The biggest threat to your funeral home online is you. Yes, you, and Facebook will be your biggest downfall.
In the past few years I have probably been the biggest advocate of funeral homes using social media and funeral directors embracing social networking with a strong focus on Facebook. I have also been very open about why funeral homes shouldn’t set up a Facebook Profile, which is designed for personal use, but instead setup a Facebook Page (Timeline) which is designed for businesses.
Besides the fact that it is against Facebook’s terms of service, using a Profile under a business name and using it for both personal use and business purposes can be confusing and dangerous.
For example: It doesn’t make sense when “XYZ Funeral Home” post pictures of new decorations at their kids new apartment or party picture from a weekend at the lake.
It can also be very bad for your reputation when the community members, who are “friends” with you on Facebook, see that XYZ Funeral Home like “Freaks Only 18+ ONLY No Kids Allowed” page. Sounds like something that would never happen right? WRONG!
This weekend when scrolling through my Newsfeed I saw the following post from a funeral director who has his personal Profile setup under his Funeral Home name:
I can’t image this is good for you personally or your business. As a small business owner you are already under a microscope from the community, being a funeral director adds another level of scrutiny.
When you have a Profile on Facebook everything you Like, Comment, Post, or Share is put on display in the newsfeed’s of those who are your Friends. Before you get click happy know what your doing. And please stop using personal profiles under your business name.
There is a reason Facebook created Pages for businesses. If you still don’t understand why, please read this post again.
Ryan, i am totally with you. when did four letter words become appropriate for funeral directors in a public venue?
What if their page was hacked or something? You never know, my fb has DEFINITELY posted things without my permission. Maybe we should consider these things before being so judgemental.
Thank you for the reply. You are correct, the Page could have been hacked, but we did do our research and the Page was not hacked. This article is not for the purpose of pointing out one specific funeral home, it is for the profession in general. My funeral home and directors are making this mistake.
Hey Ryan…maybe the funeral home is going after a niche market…it could be their business strategy..did you interview them to find out? Just sayin’.
While there is no cure for stupidity, there are some tricky aspects of FB, that are not all that apparent. All applications (for example, innocuous birthday reminders), gain access to your FB information at some level. It’s not hard to determine what information an application is using. It’s even better to never allow applications access, in the first place,regardless of how cute or compelling they appear to be.