Lately I've been making a lot of business connections, and the majority of them have a Facebook page and have been kindly adding me. I've been accepting them with the desire to connect more with them and see what they're up to. There is, however, one problem.... my Facebook was created during my "pre-professional" days. What does this mean?
This means that there are photos of me out and about in Manhattan and in my college dorms, maybe doing some funny questionable things, as well as pictures of my family and close friends. I know they always say, "Don't put anything on the web that will come back to haunt you," but these photos truly aren't that bad (but certainly may make you lose a bit of professional credibility), and with Facebook's privacy controls, you can prevent the outer world from logging on.
The question is, do I create a professional business profile for Facebook? I barely have time to update my social networks as of now, so the thought of having to maintain two Facebook profiles makes me cringe. The question: How do you handle it, exactly? Do you simply make your profile "business friendly," or would that take away the "you" factor that your friends (old and new) love so much about you.
That puts into mind the question of how to best handle your social networks as these days, more and more professionals are connecting on them. I would love to hear and add feedback on the subject. What have you experienced?
*Update - 7/15/10: I still see traffic coming in on here so I figured I'd let you know that I've been maintaining 2 for a while now. It's true that personal contacts never really comment on industry-related posts and I like to have the other account to read industry-news and keep in touch with business contacts but I go in waves where I'm pretty active on the business account and then other waves where I'm totally dead. It definitely is difficult to maintain two and I must admit, my personal one gets 10x more attention but it is good to have the business one - particularly since Facebook has made it nearly impossible to personalize your settings now for each respective group of people in your life.
Welcome to my blog which contains various social media discussion items as well as musings that may or may not make sense to you. There's no guarantee that you will become smarter after reading any of this but some of it may in fact be entertaining. Read at your own risk.
