COMMENTS
I definitely agree that our business and personal lives have converged more through social media. While not sharing pictures from some of your activities in college is common sense, I'm perfectly willing to share personal events such as the celebration of my daughter's high graduation. I won't hesitate to post pictures from the family celebration. Why shouldn't I?
Social media is s o c i a l !
When you go to a business cocktail party don't you talk about non-business topics too?
It boils down to using common sense and not trying to crush something that is natural.
I think, as long as genuine interactions in the outer world go hand in hand with online tweeting etc, that way its holisitic and real. otherwise one is selling one's soul to a computor.
I love the image of the tourist!
It seems to me that social media is like any other professional/ personal interaction. Be transparent, be human, but don't dance on the tabletop with a lampshade on your head. Save that for more private circumstances.
I agree, social media is social! It's fine to blend professional and personal interactions - as long as they're appropriate. For example, if you were a funeral director on Twitter, you shouldn't really tweet about a the lovely flowers at a recent service, then follow it up with a tweet about how drunk you were at last nights staff social!!
As long as you're aware of how your interactions could be interepreted and you feel your interactions support your brand ethos, then it's fine!
Thanks for addressing this question Mike. It's amazing how often I get to broach this subject with clients.
Kudos for taking it head on and providing real world examples. I completely agree that individual comfort needs to guide one's strategy.
Very well stated. I agree that it is important to manage personal and professional on Social Media. Also the convergence will happen when we organize our social presence at one place under single identity for ease of use, branding and managing - The company I work with, GizaPage.com, has built a platform for individuals, brands, corporates and non-profits to organize all social profiles at one place.
BTW, I also love the image of tourist :).
Mike,
I completely agree. I used to fret that I wasn't using Facebook much(because I find it really creepy), now I use myself as an example in my presentations. I tell everyone to do what feels comfortable for them. (I'm also surprised by the number of people who also find Facebook creepy.)
PS to Rebecca -- These days, you can't even dance on the tables in "private." If someone snaps your photo, it could land up on the person's Facebook page!
Excellent topic Mike! My conversations and ramblings on Facebook and Twitter are very different and I have chosen not to connect the two feeds. On Facebook, I share the personal (sometimes boring) tidbits of myself: like what I ate last night, that I am going for a run, and that I just baked banana bread. On Twitter, my intention is to develop a dialogue that is connected to my profession. I do incorporate Tweets that are on the personal side, but my intention is different. I want to find people that I can share ideas with around marketing, sales, and trends in the open source and ecommerce industry. And I try to wear both the corporate hat but also be authentically me. I love Twitter as it feeds the curious side of me. The key for making it a rich experience is who I follow - where I am able to find content and conversations that are helpful, make me laugh, or inform me in some way that is of interest to me and my profession. I suggest that each individual do what is most comfortable for them and just to be authentic if they chose to participate.
Right now, I think the two biggest social networks where people haven't figured this out yet are facebook and twitter. Pretty clear Linked in is business only and I don't know many using MySpace professionally. There is likely to be the same "kind" of transition as e-mail (sort of) Like Tony from Zappos- he has two personas- I've been calling this the "genre of you" Everyone needs to find there voice. I feel like right now we're in a transition phase- people will tolerate "some" personal quirkiness, but the ratio will begin to diminish as more and more people grow weary of reading about the cat and want to get down to business. This is a snippet from my recent blog post on the exact same issue- <a> http://click2dennis.blogspot.com/2009/06/separating-business-from-pleasure-in.html
Thanks. It helps me distinguish between social, personal, and personable. Social media allows me to be more "personable" (i.e., friendlier, more authentic) without
imposing too much personal information on colleagues.
At DM Days 2009, Mike Gamson of LinkedIn even distinguished between the two. LinkedIn is about professional, Facebook is about social. Sounds like good advice.
I think you hit the nail on the head to do what is within your "comfort zone". Yes, I use Twitter <a>http://twitter.com/sdharlow as a business outlet, but I use it in the manner it was intended- One Big Cocktail Party- That is where you mix business and pleasure. Facebook , same thing. MySpace, really no use for it. I keep my blog professional. That is the core of my business. Part of my marketing funnel. I am relaxed and open in my posts, yet it is about business, not about what I'm going to cook over the grill tonight.
Good Question, is it attainable? Sure it is, to be honest with ourselves will be the key to presenting a persona that is reaping with good vibes and positive attention. Honesty is the best policy! But, be aware of not sharing to much of yourself & your personal attributes, "some things are better left un-said"
Great advice. I think you shouldn't publish anything you don't want your parents to see.
Whenever I have doubts about a particular tweet, I ask myself "Is this something that I would say to people at a cocktail party?" If the answer is no, the tweet doesn't go out afterall.
"There is the business me, and there is the personal me and always the two have mixed..." is the opening line of a blog post I wrote on the topic about 6-8 months ago. It lists
10 Opinions - Business or Personal in Social Media? Market & Sell with Courage!
Mike
The way I look at it, if I would share it with you naturally during the course of a conversation, I'm fine to have it on my profile. Since this is all about building relationships, if you share books you like, music you listen too or movies you've watched, you find common connections with others and they with you. I think the key is to know "when is too much" and be careful not to cross the line or risk turning off or offending others.
I totally agree with first post and most of comments, and particularly like the “Cocktail party” image. I have to confess, though, that what caught my eye of the title was if I was to find there the answer to the question I’m asking myself often: how to manage the “double” personality –personal /professional- in social media. Sounds the same as the title, doesn’tit? But what I mean by that is that is very frequent (at least in the cultural sector) that the professional side “invades” the personal more than the other way around (well, you allow it to invade, of course).
For example, let’s simplify and say Facebook is personal and Linkedin is professional. Although it’s highly unlikely I’ll talk about my children or my holidays on Linkedin, it happens quite often that I put on Fb info or a link about the next exhibition in “my” museum or comment a new post of the museum blog.
And what about Twitter? I guess ¾ of my tweets and the people I follow are related to my work in museums. It’s not a complain (I chose it to be so!), but it’s starrting to worry me that all this participation and blogging dedicated to the museum late in the evenings or on weekends, it’s highly time consuming of my leisure time.
I enjoy it. I learn a lot. I feel I need all these inputs to stay updated, but it takes so much time! …
How do you people manage that?
@innova2
I fully understand people who dont like to talk about private stuff :) Music especially!
Bad music is for bad people and sometimes, if you care about people, its better not to provide them a chance to be overlooked or despised because of their (sometimes really disgusting) musical taste.
Thats why I am not asking ANYONE about music and literature. Dont want to know, seriously. For me this is the only right way to manage personal and business in my life - to avoid conflicts.
I suppose it is similar to having pictures of our family, children, etc. on our desk in the office only just one step further. Cultures that depend on relationship building feel compelled towards marketers who build relationships. Part of relationship building means revealing a part of ourselves.
I think there is a blurry line between professional and personal accounts. But this mix depends on the type of account you want to manage, or the business you are in. For instance, you do see Pete Cashmore (CEO of Mashable) post a joke or two in the mashable account, but you don't see him talking about his lunch. Same goes for Tim O'Reilly. Those accounts are almost 100% business.
Now, imagine you are part of a company what you tweet reflects on the company, if you start posting pics of your drunken new years party and your company has a conservative policy your tweeting makes them look bad. Companies need a social media policy, you can't control what your employees will tweet about, but you can give them some guidelines about the "tweeting common sense"
Think before you tweet you never know who might read what you tweet about.
Doug Ulman, Livestrong CEO, posts things mostly about work, but once in a while tweets about life, ie. he just tweeted about his niece. This is a guy who was a nice control over the personal and professional life.
I think as a general rule you need to understand that whats on the web regardless of the "private" or non private accounts is public. Therefore you need to have good common sense to what share and to keep private. Even for personal safety, it might not be such a good idea to post exactly where you are or your spending habits. Once you realize those things you can start using social media with full knowledge of its reach and consequences.
@ Lisa Singh -- Totally agree. Building relationships requires revealing some of the things that you are truly passionate about (besides work). A contract can last a couple of months or a couple of years, but a relationship can last forever.
Mixing personal and business are often difficult to refrain from when your business is so much of your personal life. When you love ehat you do, it's hard to not mix the two.
This post is another example of the outstanding content you generously share with your audience.
I recently commented on Dan Schawbel's Personal Branding Blog about utilizing Facebook for both personal and professional branding (http://bit.ly/trgic) and the dilemma of maintaining separate personas.
I keep my professional and personal personas distinctly separate. I cultivate and maintain my professional relationships / persona via LinkedIn, Twitter, and FriendFeed while maintaining my personal relationships / persona via Facebook.
Coincidentally, I started thinking about creating a second Facebook page focused strictly on professional relationships. This idea originated from one of the Inbound Marketing University lectures you kindly shared last week. I haven't implemented this idea but am seriously considering it.
The advice provided in your post really wraps things up nicely -- Thank You.
All the best from a highly grateful 2009 InBound Marketing University Student,
Tony Faustino