Managing Your Personal vs. Business Social Profiles: Should You Keep Your Worlds Apart?

Most people have trouble managing multiple social profiles. I hear it all the time. “I don’t have time for Twitter,” “I only use LinkedIn,” “I don’t want everyone seeing what I did this weekend,” “Do I really need to join Google+?”

What do you post? When do you post? And with whom do you share your information? These are all questions that everyone asks. In this day and age, you can’t run a business without having a social media presence, but you also can’t do it all.

This week, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on Mobile Social Communications hosted by Business Development Institute. I participated in a round-table discussion on “Managing Your Personal and Business Social Platforms,” which was moderated by Laura Fink, Vice-President of OPEN Social Media and Customer Marketing for American Express OPEN. We talked about strategies people use to control their social profiles for their personal lives and for business.

Different Approaches

I like to use LinkedIn for business, Facebook for personal, and Twitter for a mix of the two. However, this is becoming a challenge especially when colleagues and business contacts start to friend request you on Facebook.

Christine Perkett, President & Founder of Perkett PR, said she adds everyone as friends on Facebook and then she organizes them into lists. This is a great way to manage your brand and personal life with one social network. Most people don’t know that Facebook lists have been around from the very beginning; it’s only since Google+ came around with their fancy circles that Facebook started promoting the use of lists.

Karen Strauss, from Strauss Consultants Inc., mostly uses Twitter. Twitter can easily integrate with many tools to streamline managing your social profiles. I like to use Twitterfeed to automatically post links to our company blogs. I also link my Twitter account with my LinkedIn profile, which makes it easier to manage the two.

How to Use Facebook Lists:

Organize your Facebook friends into lists like All Access Friends, Family, Co-workers, Clients, Acquaintances, etc… and then when you post those cute pictures of your kid’s first day of school you can choose to just let your friends and family see them by selecting the appropriate list from the drop- down menu.

How to Integrate Twitter with LinkedIn:

In your LinkedIn window, visit “Edit My Profile” and click “Add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field. Twitter will ask you to verify your account name and password. Once the account is verified, you’ll be asked how you’d like to share your tweets on LinkedIn .
Once your accounts are joined, you can change this setting at any time by clicking “Edit” next to your Twitter account name.  When setting you set up this link, you can choose to only post Tweets that where tagged #in to your LinkedIn profile.

How do you manage your social presence? Do you have any additional tools and/or techniques that work for you? Let us know by commenting below.