How to juggle the personal and professional online
As you may or may not know, every Saturday night at 9 PM EST, Stanford Smith and I co-host an informal chat called #Tweetdiner on Twitter. The goal is help people get used to Twitter and Twitter chats and also to answer questions that have been bothering people throughout the week. We have fun, too, I’ll have to admit.
Last night’s chat began with a tremendous question from my new friend @Veola_JustAsIAm. She asked whether she should have two Twitter accounts, one for personal use and one for professional use. This created quite the conversation, so I thought I would round up some thoughts here and see if we can continue this important conversation beyond the realm of #Tweetdiner.
Brand Symbiosis
Amber Naslund just published a post this week that she called Brand Symbiosis: Balancing Personal and Professional Online. In this post, Amber talks about the fact that in the online world, it’s nearly impossible to separate our professional selves from our personal selves. In fact, these portions of our personality (along with others) help feed each other – hence the symbiosis. We are able to enrich our professional persona by humanizing ourselves (with personality). SpamBots do not tend to be very personable once you get to know them. Our personal selves are enriched by the learning and sharing that we do as our professional selves.
A million and one questions
Brand symbiosis is probably how I would characterize what I try to do via my blog and my Twitter account. I’ll have fun, I’ll joke around, I certainly talk about things not business-related. But I also never forget where I am. I act and talk as if I was visiting a client, because, let’s be honest, it’s entirely possible that your existing and future clients are seeing everything you’re saying and doing anyway.
Where this gets complicated is when you get down to the tiny details that go into making an online persona that don’t often get discussed a lot in general conversations. Here are some questions that might be bothering you if you are trying to balance your professional and your personal life online.
Should my avatar/Twitter background/Blog bio show pictures of my family and me, or should it just be a professional picture of me smiling?
Should I list my faith in my Twitter bio and in my blog background or should I leave it out?
Should I comment on this or that political situation or should I censor portions of what I really believe?
Should I divulge that I am having health problems (or had them in the past) or should I keep that to myself?
And the questions go on and on, right back to Viola’s question. Should I have two Twitter accounts and two blogs so that I can get all of my thoughts out there?
How would you introduce yourself in a crowded room?
Your Twitter account or your blog – they’re kind of like going around shaking hands in a really crowded room. So let’s say you’ve gone to BlogWorld and there’s a tweet-up there. As you’re going around shaking hands, what do you say? Do you say, “Hi, I’m Sally and I’m a mom of three?” Do you say, “Hi, I’m Bob, and I’m the CMO for xyz corporation?” If you are using Social Media on a professional basis, the expectation is not (or in my opinion should not be) that we will get to know you like a best friend. The expectation is that ultimately, you’re out here trying to make money and grow your business, whatever that may be.
In the end, like everything else, the answers to all of these questions that come up will have to be answered based on what you want to accomplish. Because I work for a family-owned agency, and because the family owning the agency is my family, I feel responsible for being my best self out here in the online world. I don’t talk about religion or politics anywhere in my online reality even though I love discussing both. I don’t use swear words online (I’ll plead the fifth on whether I hold to that in real life). I don’t reserve those portions of my personality for a more personal account, because ultimately, it would get traced back to me here, I believe. I talk to you here as I would talk to you if you called me when I’m at work.
What works for you?
Ironically, how you choose to handle the balance of professional and personal is a personal decision only you can make. If you feel like censoring oneself is inauthentic, then don’t do it. If you feel like your religious beliefs are essential to an understanding of how you do business, then you need that there.
There is just one caution I’d toss out there if you choose to run multiple accounts. The chances are that there will be some overlap in the people who follow you and interact with you. Be prepared for the personal account to still have some impact on some of the people tied to your professional account. This online world – it’s fluid, and it’s easy to move from one place to another.
How are you approaching the balance between personal and professional? What questions are standing in front of you that you’d like to discuss? Let’s talk about them here!
image by Jan Willem Geertsma. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jan-willem
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I totally agree to keep religious preference, political views, and swear words out of your blogs , tweets, or facebook. An Avitar of the person is great so you can see them face to face.
You don’t tell everyone you meet you have acid reflux, so why put it out there for the world to know. The best social media blogs I have read have been friendly but professional. Sure
your personality shows a little but that’s what makes you different from the next tweeter.
Your knowledge is the reason you are read.
Exactly. I like to think of it as brains shaking hands. Although then that gets kind of creepy. But yes, you can be personable without being personal. That can be quite a big difference!
What great timing for me, I have been asking myself this very question lately. While most of my tweets are regarding my particular area of interest and that of many of those that follow me, I also am frequently tempted to post something funny or more personal that is completely unrelated. And then I wonder: will people who ‘followed’ me because they were interested in my business-related posts think this is completely unprofessional.
Obviously I am not thinking of posting anything inappropriate or too personal, but I sometimes feel very restricted in my tweets if they are to be all about ‘business’. And the idea of managing multiple accounts just seems….too much.
I love your advice about thinking and acting as I would in the presence of a client. Light banter and the occasional joke or tidbit is completely acceptable and even desirable (in my opinion). So I’ll save the complaints about husband and in-laws for a different forum, but think about including the occasional ’20 inches of snow in Montreal this morning, yay!’.
But for now, gotta go dig my car out…
Well hi there, Michelle! So glad this found you at a convenient time.
I know exactly what you mean. When I first started tweeting, I didn’t even know if I should say, “We read this article” instead of “I.” It got very confusing.
The “at work” analogy has proven to be a helpful guideline for me in terms of drawing clear borders around what I would and would not say about or to others. I hope that it works for you as well. Keep me posted! 🙂
‘I act and talk as if I was visiting a client’ – that is awesome advice. Because I consider myself a role model for youth, I speak/act as if I were in front of them at a school I am performing at.
‘Live in the moment But act in a way you will be proud of for the moments to come.’.
Absolutely. Although in a way, we’re all in the position of being role models online, right? We share this space with kids, teens, and young adults. If they see professional adults acting inappropriately online, that sets the tone, I think.
I would agree though, folks like you who work directly with children and teens – you need to be particularly careful about how you present yourself online. I think you do a great job! 🙂
I start with everything online is out there and visible to the world. There is much self-editing that I do, tho some may not think so. My FB personal page used to be extremely political but I’ve had to cut back sharply when I began my business. Yes, some things still get out, but it is a part of me and that’s the way it is. My ‘political’ bits are more about underdogs getting screwed and not stupid crap about birth certificates. And yes I say crap and damn (tho dang mostly). I am a New Yorker in the South which either prompts me to bite my tongue or to rebel against the restrictions (political and religious) and narrow-mindedness here. It creates a lot of interior conflict.
Everything I’ve ever learned about business is that people will buy from whom they like. Consumers have a variety of sellers to buy from, often same product/same price, so the determining factor is the personal fit. The only way to determine that is to show personality. And if I talk about throwing pies at Tweetdiner, which I did for the first time the other night, then to me, that just shows I’m fun loving. But in the back of my mind I knew it was getting a little too goofy even for me.
The bottom line for me is that you are the brand. You can be whatever that takes – a public company may have more rules than a solopreneur shop and you adjust accordingly. I would rather deal with a client who has personality and some evidence of a fun side than one who is dry and strictly professional. Especially in the field of social media, one expects folks to be Social, not an IBM-er in a dark suit.
There has to be, what I call, a WooHoo level. It can be a few LOL’s tossed around in a post to Halloween costume office party pictures posted; everyone has to find the right level that suits them. I did a comparison for a client of 5 different insurance agencies on FB to show the various WooHoo levels and the interaction on the page brought by each. As you can guess, the dry, no-nonsense ones got nothing and the party one got tons of responses.
So I think a mixture of business and fun keeps one human and social, and there is a line between them, but that line is really determined by the client as to what is too much to one side or the other. Your action is determined by your client base and your estimation of what they will like or not, but again, if it’s social media your client wants to be in, your light side will probably come out more to accommodate the medium.
Sorry for the long post, thanks for listening.
Don’t apologize! It’s great that you took the time to share all of that sentiment and thought over here! That’s how one enriches the conversation!
I agree 100%. It’s all about symbiosis. I do lament that I feel the need to censor myself on politics, but I just keep in my head, “what do I say when I’m visiting a client?” I don’t talk religion or politics. Might talk about movies though. And other fun stuff.
As for the pie tossing, yeah, we get a bit silly at tweetdiner sometimes, but it’s also Saturday night, and as long as there is also good conversation going, I am okay with it. It’s when the goofiness takes over that I worry 🙂
Thank you!!!
What a great question, Margie. I’ve been struggling with split online personalities lately, too. I’m not sure there’s a right answer, but here’s where I’m at:
I keep 3 separate Twitter accounts, partially because I have two businesses, but also because I play with tools like Foursquare, Scoutmob, etc. I know my @brandsprout tweeps don’t really care if I’m at Starbucks or not, but my friends might be interested to see @grumpkat scored a great deal at a local boutique.
My other business is a fair trade etailer, which is very different from my marketing consulting. I tweet occasionally from @artfullyblessed, but I don’t invest as much time in that account, or the FB page for that business. I haven’t even started the blog yet! This business is tied to a personal passion, so my FB friends know all about it. I don’t hit them with every Artfully Blessed post or they’d tell me to can it. If they’re interested, they follow the business.
Besides splitting interests, a lot of my choices about what to post are platform based. I have different approaches for FB vs LinkedIn, for example, because their focus is different.
I keep my personal FB profile limited to friends and family who I can hug in real life. They know me and (hopefully) understand me, so I can vent or goof off more. I always remember the info is public, and I maintain a level of decorum that I might abandon in my living room.
On LinkedIn I’m the most filtered. I sometimes link posts or tweets, but only if they seem right for my professional network. That’s where you see the professional me.
Miller’s is dead-on that people buy from someone they like. A little personality in a business environment is a good thing (we’re human, after all). I’m working on better integration between my split personalities so the real me shines through in all of them, but I haven’t mastered the juggling yet.
You’re in a very different kind of situation entirely! That’s interesting. I think increasingly people are starting to tweet or blog for more than one business. So how do you keep all of that straight?
My only concern for you is what I noted above – if there is overlap amongst any of your audiences, do they get confused about where they are and who they’re talking to? Do your friends wish to follow your two professional accounts so they can help support you? That can be a valuable tool that you might miss out on if you entirely segregate the personal from the professional.
Keep me posted on how things evolve for you!
Joey, We’re twins… in our divided approaches to social media. I blog for my business, maintain a professional profile that is public yet very human and real. But there are networks and places it’s personal, more “private.” One reason is that the audiences are different, say those who follow me on Twitter vs. LinkedIn vs. Facebook. Another thing is that, while I am 100% me all the time, being on those places is as much about me as them and what I want to share.
Marjorie, I am like Miller and Joey in this. I keep worlds from combining too much as I think you lose yourself when that happens. Per your comment about not talking politics or religion around clients, we all censor ourselves be it at work or home. Maybe you don’t want to alienate a potential client, or it’s that annoying uncle you don’t want giving you a hard time about your crazy political leanings. 😉
What works for me is that I am approachable, human, personable while online, hopefully always being professional. The “personal vs. professional” is a fave debate of mine and like you, I always settle on to each his or her own. Mileage will always vary.
I think it definitely has to revolve around what you’re comfortable with, and nobody can really tell you what that magical line will be. But it’s important to remember your various audiences as well. And that can be where it gets a bit complicated! 🙂
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