Social Networking – Can You Combine Professional and Personal?
Posted on | January 26, 2009 | 2 Comments
nationalcannabischamberofcommerce.com
A friend of mine who had a Facebook page during her school years recently put up a new page to handle her professional life.
Natalie Hart at FutureNow shared her dilemma of whether she should separate her personal and professional Facebook life.
This week I created a new Facebook account. Having made my original Facebook account at the age of 17, and it following me through my college years, I feared the impression professional contacts would get from my pictures, status updates and wall posts from friends. Not that I was the most rebellious girl in the pack, but I doubted that my boss needed to be updated every time my best friends wrote an inside joke on my wall or posted a funny picture of us all out a bar. So, I “de-friended” all of my professional contacts that I had accumulated on my original facebook account and “re-friended” them on my new, professional Facebook account.
Natalie started to second guess her decision. She asked for commenters to chime in and it has led to a fascinating discussion.
In this new world of social media – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc., it’s something professionals everywhere are facing. How much of my personal life do I share online where my professional life/clients/colleagues can also see it? How much do I combine the two?
What happens if a high profile client sees a picture your pal posted of a drinking episode or offbeat Halloween costume. (I went one year as a Smurf and I still lose sleep at night fearing a picture may find its way to the Internet).
If a client sees you enjoy knitting, will they lose respect for you? (If you’re laughing, you should read about the huge resurgance of kniting in this country – by women and men)
If a professional colleague learns your political/religious views, will he/she think twice about how they really feel about you?
Let’s look at some pros and cons of combining professional and personal.
Pros:
- You never know when a personal friend can turn into a great professional contact
- You can enrich your professional relationships by sharing information about yourself
- You can be more authentic, having a more seamless integration of your personal and professional life
Cons
- Professional contacts may have a negative reaction to some of the personal details you share in your profile
- If you are a private person, you may not want your professional peers to have access to your more personal information.
- You can’t control what your friends are saying and doing and how your professional contacts might react to that.
Some folks suggest Facebook controls that let you control who sees what. But I’m curious as to how others are handling this social media mingling of professional and personal. Is this something you struggle with?
Comments
2 Responses to “Social Networking – Can You Combine Professional and Personal?”
Leave a Reply
January 26th, 2009 @ 11:40 am
Great question! Personally, I use FB for personal and Linkedin for professional and am not comfortable combining the two.
I imagine this is in part due to one’s personality, social style, generation, life-stage and career/work style… so there is no “right” answer as to which way to go.
Perhaps I’d consider one app if it had a lot of control as to who enters and sees what camp (personal vs. public). But I wouldn’t want a combo app to sacrifice awesome functionality tailored to differing personal or professional needs. From my experience, Facebook has a ways to go to offer the same professional tools that Linkedin has developed and visa verse.
January 27th, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
Here’s a scary example of combining personal with professional – http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/01/21/key-online-influencer/