Including your team in social media posts? Read this first.

Jul 23, 2025
Do’s and don’ts of showcasing your team online

CRE Success Principle: Positive social media content helps you to build trust, but careless posting can damage your business, harm your people and put your reputation at risk.

 

I’ve always encouraged commercial real estate leaders to show up on social media – not just personally, but by highlighting their teams too.

It builds trust, adds warmth and helps attract great talent.

But recently, someone pointed out the risks, and it made me realise I’d been missing a big part of the picture.

From online harassment to legal issues, posting team content without the right safeguards can backfire.

In this episode, I share how to feature your people in a way that’s ethical, effective and safe.

You’ll learn what a strong social media policy should include, why consent matters and how to manage team posts when staff move on.

The takeaway? Social media is powerful but only when used with care.

If you want to support your team and grow your brand, the right guardrails matter.

 

Episode transcript:

On today's episode, I want to dive into a topic that's so relevant for commercial real estate agencies – and really most businesses nowadays – and that's the use of social media channels to promote the business and the way that we feature our teams in our social media posts.

Now, because people do connect with people more than they connect with brands or logos, featuring our people on our social media channels is, on the surface, a great move.

But it also comes with some responsibility. We need to be intentional – not just thinking about the marketing opportunities, but also the risks, whether it's brand dilution, privacy breaches, or even legal issues that can come from featuring your staff on your social media channels.

It's a topic that I wasn't really across until someone highlighted the risks to me recently. And given so many commercial real estate businesses are leaning into Instagram and LinkedIn, and they're featuring their team members on their channels, I just wanted to highlight some of the opportunities and also the risks that can present themselves – and what you, as a leader, can do to protect and grow your business while using social media.

This is episode 230 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak.

Thanks for joining us for today's episode. I'm here to help commercial real estate principals lead better, grow faster, and stress less.

And we've got a great document that we released earlier this month to help you do just that – it's 100 AI Engineered Prompts for Commercial Real Estate Agencies.

It's totally free – 100 prompts that you can start using on whatever AI platform you like, whether that's Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini… all of these prompts will work on your preferred AI platform.

You can grab the guide at cresuccess.co/100 is where you go to grab that guide: 100 AI Engineered Prompts for Commercial Real Estate Agencies at cresuccess.co/100

Well, social media is what we're talking about today. And I can increasingly see commercial real estate principals flanked by their teams on social media.

And look, this is a great thing to do because it humanises your brand. Commercial real estate, I think, can be seen as transactional – and putting real faces to your brand adds warmth, relatability, and it helps people engage with your brand more than just with, well, pictures of properties or your company logo.

I also think that when you highlight your talent, it can help you attract more talent, because it can show high-performing, supportive teams – and that will appeal to like-minded people. It's kind of like branding for you as an employer.

Also, when you have good content – content with people's faces – that's going to enhance your organic reach. It's going to be more engaging, which is another reason why you might want to use social media platforms to promote your business and also feature some of your team in those posts.

And when you're doing this, the content that you post can reinforce the culture that exists in your business – the values that you have as a business owner that you also want to see reflected in the business and also portrayed to the marketplace. And this all helps you strengthen your market position.

And because social media is really quite democratised – in terms of it being the quality of the content, rather than the number of followers or how big your business is – that will determine how many people see that content. Well, you can really get the word out about your business and lift the entire business's credibility and profile.

So there are many reasons why you would want to use social media. And I certainly have been someone who supports using social media to grow your personal brand and also to grow the company brand.

But there are some risks that business owners do expose themselves to when they feature members of their teams on their company social media channels – which someone was talking me through the other day.

And I thought it was relevant to bring to this podcast to share with you – not to freak you out or discourage you from using social media to gain all those benefits that we've just talked about, but just to make sure that you understand and that you've mitigated the risks that do exist for business owners who choose to have their team members on their social media channels.

So let me just run through some of these risks for you now.

If you're going to be using your team members’ faces – video, images of them – on your social media channels, best practice would be to obtain their permission.

And the reason why you want to get their consent is because you can be exposed if something untoward does occur later.

They could face online harassment, which can be traced back to the post from your social media channel. I actually heard a story about a female member of staff who was stalked as a result of somebody finding this person on a company's social media channel.

And that obviously didn’t occur to me as a possibility – but I guess it does occur. So therefore, as business owners, we need to make sure that we've got people's consent to actually be featured in our social media posts.

Probably the best way to do this going forward is to get people's consent when they are onboarded – and that could be a small step you can take to avoid this issue.

But for your existing staff, you may want to ask them to sign some sort of waiver or to give consent for them to be featured on your social media channels. Because particularly for junior staff – and also for women more than men, unfortunately – unwanted visibility can lead to real problems, right?

So give people the choice to do it. Don't force people. Make it an opt-in with no pressure and make sure that people feel safe and comfortable – and that it's something they actually want to be involved with.

Another issue that can occur with social media is when staff leave the business. Their past visibility can create some confusion or even tension.

I would make sure that your social media policy makes it clear that you have the right to continue to use that content, even if that person does leave the business.

And while people’s personal social media channels are a matter for them, the lines can sometimes be blurred when people set up social media channels that are specifically for business purposes.

For example, you might have a personal Instagram page, but also an Instagram page which is all about you as a business owner.

Or your team members may have one which is about them as a commercial real estate agent. And of course, LinkedIn is very much more the domain of a professional profile than a personal profile.

So having some social media policies that encourage people to present themselves, when representing your company, in a certain way can help people understand what the expectations are.

And it also shows that you've done your bit to create a safe working environment for people, given some of the issues that can emerge when people are on social media.

So let me just give you this little checklist of some best practices around social media in the workplace.

Have a social media policy that defines the rules of the road. If you're looking for people to grow their personal brands and you just tell them to do that without any guardrails – without any guidance on what's appropriate – they can start posting things which might be off-brand, inappropriate, or just a little bit awkward.

So give people some guidance. Have a policy in place for what it is that you expect, as a business, when people post about work and reference your business name – but also what the guidelines are for posting from the company social media page, and when tagging the company in any social media posts.

I recommend having a consent form that individuals are required to sign off on if they are to be featured on your social media channels.

And make sure that you're very clear about what would happen to any social media posts that feature your employees on your company profile if and when that person exits the organisation.

So it's very clear, and people understand that they can't be coming back later and demanding that you delete a certain post if they no longer work with the organisation. Now, you may want to do that – but that should be your choice to do that, rather than a former employee’s.

And I did hear a story about a disgruntled former employee who then used their presence on a company's social media profile as a kind of mechanism to come back in and to cause a little bit of trouble.

So, if as a company we've got social media policies and consent in place, I think we're less likely to be exposed to any of those risks which can come up in the future.

And I think, apart from just any legal risks, it's also just good ethical practice to make sure that we are doing what we can to protect and support our employees online – particularly when it is online activity that they're doing in support of the business.

So look – today's episode, I don't mean to freak you out by talking about something that perhaps you didn't think was a risk. And I admit, I didn't think it was much of a risk until someone started talking me through some of these issues.

And I realised that, you know, social media is smart marketing. It's modern leadership.

Featuring your team in your social media posts shows that you value them and that you trust them to represent your brand.

But at the same time, we also need to make sure that we've got the structures and safeguards in place to protect them – and to protect your business.

Because if we just post on social media carelessly, it can damage your reputation. It can potentially harm your staff. It can also be risky for your business.

So I hope that you found today's episode useful. If you did – and you know of another commercial real estate business owner who should be hearing this – make sure you do share this episode with them. I'd really appreciate it if you can do that.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening and I will speak to you soon.

 

About the author

 


Darren Krakowiak, Founder, CRE Success

Darren Krakowiak, the driving force behind CRE Success, brings over 20 years of hands-on experience and a legacy of success in Commercial Real Estate. His passion for the industry is matched only by his commitment to nurturing the growth of others. Darren’s vision extends beyond coaching; it’s about building a community of thriving professionals in Commercial Real Estate.

About the author

 


Darren Krakowiak, Founder, CRE Success

Darren Krakowiak, the driving force behind CRE Success, brings over 20 years of hands-on experience and a legacy of success in Commercial Real Estate. His passion for the industry is matched only by his commitment to nurturing the growth of others. Darren’s vision extends beyond coaching; it’s about building a community of thriving professionals in Commercial Real Estate.

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