Tales About My Client From Hell

Full disclosure: that’s as salty as the language is going to get in this week’s edition, I promise. Further, I apologize if I shocked you with that title, but I believe you’ll see my reasoning in just a moment.

Social media is ubiquitous. (That’s a fancy word meaning “found everywhere”, and I chose to use it instead of “found everywhere” because it sounds cool – try using it at your next cocktail party to impress your friends.) Whether we’re at work, school, place of worship, coffee shop, etc., we’re touched by some avenue of social media. It’s sort of made us a “transparent” society, and there are many good things about that. However, that transparency often leads to oversharing and the insistence that being rude should be accepted because someone’s “just being honest.” Let me be honest here: that’s hooey! (I told you I wouldn’t get salty.)

Fire up Instagram or Facebook, and you’ll see people posting, for example, how they feel about a particular public figure and using language that would raise the blood pressure of their second-grade teacher. When it’s a private individual exercising their right to free speech, I’m all for that right. However, when a person uses the same social media outlet/application for both personal and professional purposes, and they don’t employ a “filter”, we should all be wary.

You might be saying at this point, “I couldn’t disagree more. I would rather have a person be the same in both a professional and casual setting – that way I know they’re ‘real’.” I’m not here to pitch a big argument with you, but I’ll pose this question to you along those same lines: if that person is being “real” and saying not-so-nice things about someone else, are you sure they have the restraint to NOT say not-so-nice things about you to other people?

If you’re a potential buyer or seller of a home, and you came across an Instagram feed for a particular real estate agent who had some great photos and interesting tidbits but found one of their posts complaining about having just dealt with their “client from Hell”, are you really sure they’re going to have the patience and perspective you might need to have a happy and successful transaction? I’ve heard it said (and a quick Google search isn’t bringing up who actually said it) that, just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean it’s right to say. Discretion and good judgment are sort of frowned upon and thought of as “not cool” in today’s social media world – and that’s a shame.

Further, I’m not here to decry social media. I think they’re great for a lot of reasons. (Heck, without Facebook, I wouldn’t remember half my friends’ birthdays.) Social media are GREAT tools for business, too! And like any tool, when it’s used properly, we see great results. If used improperly – like buying a $1000 mountain bike to ride around the block (twice a year) – it’s a waste of resources. For example, if you’re an agent using social media for business and you fill your Instagram feed with JUST pretty pictures of houses interspersed with a shot of your dog/cat and your latest vacation, you’re sending the wrong message: that you sit around loading photos on Instagram all day. Instead, you want to tell people what makes you stand out and why you’re better equipped to handle their transaction than the gajillion other agents out there. But don’t get too serious – use good judgment.