Should You Include Business Contacts In Your Facebook Friend List?

Facebook has morphed from a personal tool linking personal friends to a mission-critical business tool which ties you to your business community of friends. 

I have often heard it said that you shouldn’t be sharing your personal information with business associates.  Of course, this is old school thinking, tied to the premise that our business relationship should be kept to “how are the wife and kids….” 

But let’s examine all the things that you’re missing if you don’t have a robust community of business associates 'friended' on Facebook:

And BTW:  Feel free to send me a friend request to my Facebook account here. I would be happy to add you….

You won’t be able to learn about those business associates, what their likes and dislikes are, and most importantly, where your common interests lie. 

You won’t be able to see what kinds of business information are being posted by those friends.  Essentially, you’ll be standing on the shore watching the stream of information pass without any knowledge of what’s in it. 

You won’t have an opportunity to see what events they are attending in the future, so that you can coordinate.  When you find yourself at the same event, you won’t know they are attending a certain presentation that they are posting about while you sit elsewhere. 

You’ll miss out on all the trends that are important to your particular industry (assuming you have friended people in your industry).

I’m sure I’m leaving a lot of things out.  Feel free to add to the list, and don’t forget to friend your business associates.