Work / Life Balance in Social Networking
How do you decide which social media to use for personal use and which to use for business use?
All the fun ways to connect with people means it can often make it difficult to separate our business lives from our personal lives. For example, I have several different blogs I write and even one personal one. However, I don’t like to mingle them. I rarely if ever talk about work in my personal blog because my family (who I write it for) would be bored to tears. They don’t quite get why I love technology and geeky stuff so much.
Then, I have the three corporate blogs I contribute to:
Aside from blogs, I use Twitter for professional things and mostly because I don’t think people would ever care about the mundane things of my every day life. Once and a while I slip but I earnestly try to use it for professional networking, learning, and sharing what my team is doing.
Social networks. I am on a lot of them. I usually sign up and then see if I want to use it. I do have the obligatory Facebook and MySpace accounts but I don’t use them for professional reasons. I just like to stay connected with people.
However, if I was running an organization I would consider using Facebook to connect with my target market. Whether you’re selling a product people love (like Apple’s iPhone, Starbucks Coffee, Zoot Sports triathlon gear) or you’re promoting your school, cause, or political candidate, Facebook is an excellent opportunity to bring people in and keep them up to date. In this sense, I do become the follower in this social network and not a leader like the blog forces me to be. I’ll try to do a follow-up post soon on some ways I recommend people to use facebook since the ways to connect are becoming more creative every day.
Other social networks I use regularly (more professionally) are Plaxo and LinkedIn. Okay, so I don’t update my profile as often as I should and I’m not sure what benefits there are…yet. It is something I’m on and trying to learn more about. Sometimes social networks take time to figure out the real benefit. Don’t dismiss a way to connect too quickly; you never know how it might benefit you in the long run.
Now here is where it gets tricky when it comes to social mediums, how do you decide which medium you get more benefit out of personally or professionally -
I guess the other option is to create two separate accounts to keep your work work and personal interests private. If you can do that, please let me know how because I wonder where you’d find the time and the ability to keep all your social media straight.
The more I’m thinking about it the more I think I might need a neatly organized chart to keep track of everything. Otherwise, I think the time suck of web 2.0 is going to grab a hold of me and never let go. There goes work productivity and possibly my job if I don’t watch out! Lol
How do you manage the balance between work and personal on the ever intertwining social media?