Love them or hate them, social media sites are wildly popular with many people. Individuals use sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others for personal as well as professional reasons. They connect with other individuals who are friends, family members and co-workers. They also connect with organizations and businesses. You may be wondering how social media sites may benefit you as a mystery shopper. Here are a few key benefits that you can enjoy when you use social media sites.
Networking
You can use social media sites to connect with other mystery shoppers. While many mystery shoppers have been networking with other mystery shoppers through online forums for years now, social media sites provide you with yet another opportunity to network. In some cases, you may enjoy the improved ability to network with mystery shoppers who share your same interests, live close to you or even work with the same providers. This allows you to network in a more customized, personalized way. In addition, you may network in a more personalized way with your providers. The online forums are largely used by mystery shoppers, but you can connect with your providers’ company page, follow their tweets and more online through social media sites.
Finding Opportunities
You can use social media sites to find new work opportunities in some cases. For example, if you keep your eyes and ears open, you may learn about a mystery shopping provider that offers higher rates or that has more assignments in your area. Some providers actually use these sites to announce new assignments that are available, and these assignments may not always be posted on their job boards. Connecting with providers through social media sites may enable you to find more or better opportunities than you currently are finding on the job boards.
Training and Education
Many social media sites provide you with the opportunity to learn more about industry happenings if you regularly follow the sites. For example, there may be a mystery shoppers convention heading to your town or a nearby town, or there may be an online training seminar that can help you to get certified to complete video mystery shopping assignments. You can easily learn more about these opportunities, and these can actually help you to become a better mystery shopper.
There are some pitfalls to avoid when using social media sites as a mystery shopper. For example, you may not want all of your Facebook friends to know that you are a mystery shopper, so you may want to open a second Facebook account that is only used for mystery shopping purposes. Your job as a mystery shopper should remain secret if you want to maintain a low profile while out and about completing assignments. However, when you take a few extra precautions to maintain a low profile, you can easily take advantage of all of these benefits that social media sites offer. You can get started reviewing the various companies and organizations online today, and connect with them using a new profile or account that you’ve opened just for your mystery shopping persona.
There are problems with “liking” and connecting via Facebook with the MSC. Yes, you take a risk of your friends and family learning which companies you shop for and what the shops are, plus you might create more competition in the area you live in. I don’t recommend creating an additional FB account. It is in violation of their agreement and considering how much emphasis is placed on sticking to the MSC agreement, I can’t imagine that they would approve of that deceitfulness. I guess it is all in which agreements you are willing to violate.
The more companies, etc. that you “like” on Facebook the less you see of their posts. Too much information floats by on your news feed.
One of the schedulers I work for sent me an email asking if I was facebook. She told me she had looked me up, found someone with my name, and had sent them a message. I don’t know if the message was on their facebook page or if it was email. It was NOT me that she contacted.
I felt VERY violated that she had gone searching for me on facebook! In my opinion, she had no business doing that. (I do not have a facebook page.)
I get very frustrated with schedulers/companies that insist if we want assignments, we have to “like” them or “friend” them on facebook or check out their twitter feed. I don’t do any of those things and will NOT do any of those things. I signed a confidentiality agreement with the company. That means no talking about the work, the clients, the jobs. It really seems to me, that being on facebook or twitter or linkedin violates the confidentiality part of the agreement.
And yes, sadly, I have seen a decrease in work as more companies shift over to social media as a way to advertise and to schedule jobs.
Agree. It seems to be a violation of the confidentiality agreement by participating in either FB or twitter conversations with the MSC. Don’t think it is a good idea.