Should you separate social networking from your friends & family?

Darren had an interesting post up last month at Problogger; maybe you caught it – Dear FaceBook Friends, I’m De-Friending Most of You [It's Not You, It's Me]. The post was his public rational as to why soon he’d be deleting all his work contacts from his Facebook account. Darren’s not the only one doing this either. Lately I’ve seen many folks creating their own Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts and other work-personalized social network accounts that allow them to specifically network with work pals and contacts vs. personal real-life friends and family.

Here’s an example; say your name is Bob and you have a blog called Fantasy Cakes. You might set up a Facebook page for Bob where you only friend actual brick and mortar pals and family. You’d set up another Facebook page for Fantasy Cakes where people can friend (or fan) you. You could do the same for Twitter, ThisNext, or any number of social networking sites. You keep your real-life pals on your name account and all work pals, PR contacts and other bloggers on the Fantasy Cake accounts.

Is this a good idea?

Personally, I think it’s the new hip idea, but as for it being a good one, well, that depends on many different factors – who you are, how well you’re know (or hope to be known), and how much free time you’ve got.

The pros of keeping your real-life separate from your work life:

• Your offline friends and family don’t get bushwhacked with a million work links that you’ve posted.
• Your online work pals and editors aren’t subjected to your offline friend’s off color or bizarre comments – you know we all have that one pal offline who can’t seem to figure out that they shouldn’t give away your weird secrets online.
• As Darren pointed out in his post, Facebook friend accounts have a limit. If you’re a popular online identity your work pals and contacts can quickly overrun your actual offline pals. It’s lame to not friend your dad because you’ve got too many work friends.
• It can look more professional if you have networking set up to reflect your work.
• It can help you brand your work. Fantasy Cakes can be it’s own brand vs. the Bob brand.

The cons of keeping your real-life separate from your work life:

• It’s time intensive – this is one of the major reasons why I don’t have many Jennifer accounts vs. work accounts. I don’t have the time. I already run a ton of Twitter, Facebook and other social network accounts for clients, along with my own. If I had to update loads of other accounts for my personal blogs I’d be 100% spent time wise. Sure you can set up instant feeds to save time, but know that it’s not enough to build a following. For example, you could Twitter feed all your personal blogs, but you won’t get as many follows if you’re not on there interacting at least some of the time.
• It seems sort of presumptuous and a little annoying. Lately because everyone I know is setting up new work related accounts I get a ton of emails saying, “You should become a fan of Bob’s Fantasy Cakes!” Frankly, it’s not that important to me to fan everyone. Maybe it’s the wording, “Fan” that’s off-putting or maybe it’s because I don’t have fan pages of my own so all these accounts end up on my Jennifer page or maybe it’s that I don’t want to wade through more links right now. In any case, I’m just not into fanning people’s sites unless I REALLY like them.
• It’s confusing to offline friends. While social networking is old hat if you’re a blogger, your family and even some co-workers who aren’t as online savvy may not get it. You’ve got your Bob page, your Fantasy Cakes page, and if you launch another blog, that page. It can get confusing for people. Which page do they leave comments on, where’s your contact info for work vs. real-life, and aren’t you the same person?
• It’s a lot of work. Creating a popular Facebook fan page, or brand page is much more work than just placing or feeding links. Building a fan page or setting up a blog on Twitter does not mean people will simply come in hordes. Promotion of this sort is practically a job in itself which brings us back to the time issue.

Who should set up separate accounts…

I don’t think everyone should. If you’re extremely popular, can hire social networking help (like a CM), or are very private with your personal life then yeah, it’s likely a good idea to keep accounts separate. If you’re just doing it to gain quick traffic (um, no) or because you read some post that says it’s a great idea, I’d think carefully about it, because it’ll require a lot of time and effort. If you don’t put that time and effort in, you’ve just created one more mess of an area that people have to wade through online.

One more thing to consider is how many of your real-life pals are actually on social networking. I have offline friends and family who are on Facebook, but not enough to make me want separate pages for my work related stuff. My offline pals just don’t use Facebook as much as my work friends. I have ZERO offline family members on Twitter. My family, and actually many of my offline friends are just not into social networking – most (read 99%) don’t even read my blogs. We hang in person or talk on the phone, but they’re just not online often so making separate pages to make them more comfortable seems excessive.

If you do keep your accounts merged…

Keep it clean. Be extra diligent about deleting comments or photos that might make you look bad. I have one real life pal who will post that lame picture of you when you had one too many at the Halloween party or flipped someone off – you DO NOT want co-workers seeing this stuff.

What, in your opinion, are the pros and cons of setting up separate social networking accounts for family vs. work?

Blogging & Web Writing Gigs for June 26, 2009

Very few decent gigs today – sorry. Also, no job tip today, because I already posted a lengthy one. Read: One job listing you should not apply for.

Anywhere gigs:

health/eco/lifestyle writers – MA or Phd – Too low of pay unless pieces are short (as in blog post size). Ask.

Freelancers Wanted

Freelance Food Writers Wanted

Green blogger – saw this up before, not sure whats up.

Assistant Medical Editor for Online Med Ed Company - (Midtown Manhattan)

Location specific gigs:

San Francisco Lifestyle Blogger – guess where (ha)

Site Merchandiser – Athletic & Outdoor Footwear, Shoes & Endless - (Seattle, WA)

Senior Content Manager, TechSoup.org - (SOMA / south beach)

Web Content Assistant - (san bruno)

Coutorture Editor – Sugar Inc – NY

Manager, Product Content – Music Choice – NY

Social Media Specialist – Kiwanis International – INDIANAPOLIS, IN

Web & Communications Assistant – Infectious Diseases Society of America – Arlington, VA

Online Assistant Editor and Online Editor – Maxim Digital – Franklin, TN

Freelance Writer- Fashion/Style – AOL StyleList – NY

New Media & Communications Director - (Campbell now, Peninsula soon)

Publications Specialist - print and web stuff – (Smithsonian’s National Zoo)

Writer for Health Care/Medical Equipment News Organization - (Financial District, NY)

Writer, Copy Editor Needed Immediately - (Pompano Beach)

Creating a useful and successful blog networking plan

Social networking isn’t that hard. Anyone can tweet, leave comments, ask for link exchanges, or IM readers and blogging pals. These are all general networking ideas that can work. However, if you’re focusing on the wrong blog networking tactics for your specific blog you’re wasting your time.

In my mind we network for one basic reason, to draw readers to our blog. Maybe you’re networking for another reason; to get read for personal reasons, to promote a cause, to get a job, or to gain clicks on ads, but it really all comes down to getting people to your blog doesn’t it? Bloggers want traffic and with so many blogs around the competition can be brutal. Following are some tips that can help you fine-tune a plan for your specific blog.

Your blog comes first: You can network to your hearts content, but without a decent blog to back it up, you’re not going to gain any long-term readers. Write good posts often. Write posts your readers want to read (you can even poll readers about this). Showcase older and popular posts that new readers may have missed in the past. Other good ideas include offering easy access to rss and email options for your posts, making your blog easy to navigate, and creating an attractive blog that will entice people to look around. Taking care of your blog insures folks who land there stay and visit and hopefully come back.

Choose some, not all networking options: You can’t do it all, so you may as well choose some social networking options you enjoy. If you hate Twitter, it’s just not a good networking option for you because one, you won’t stick with it, and two, I think people can tell when you’re not really into what you’re doing.

Be selective about links: If you’re into emailing people for blogroll minded link exchanges, make sure you do your homework. I get link exchange requests frequently at Tree Hugging Family, which as you might guess is an eco-minded blog. However, I get link exchange requests from all sorts of bloggers who have nothing to to do with green. I’m not going to link a blog out of my niche so these bloggers have just wasted my time and their own. Make sure you send link exchange requests to blogs in your niche or at least in a sub-niche. Note – it’s also smart to send out link exchange requests after you’ve been blogging a while. I tend to not link brand new blogs (under 5 mos) because I have no clue if they’re in it for the long haul, and I hate having to change my blogroll.

Speaking of sub-niches: It’s smart to network with other blogs in your niche, but you can widen the field by networking with bloggers close to your niche as well. For example, if you write a thrifty blog, there’s a good chance readers of a DIY home project blog or a budget gardening blog might like your blog too.

Use the readers you have already to make networking decisions: If you have some stable readers, ones who leave comments, and also have blogs, head to their site, to see what else they’re reading. Check their blogroll and visit those blogs to leave comments. Often your readers will visit other blogs that might be good to network with.

Network with the bloggers on your level: Not to apply labels, but if you’re a less than B-list blogger (or new blogger) trying to get A-listers to notice you is a lofty goal. You might have better luck networking with less popular bloggers. We all start somewhere. You might be creating a long lasting networking relationship with a new blogger now, but who know where they’ll be in two years or less. Case in point, I became friends with a brand new blogger a couple of years ago, she had emailed me asking questions, and we hit it off. Then she managed to become way popular in under a year (rare but cool) and because we were pals she had all my blogs linked at her site, which tossed me some decent traffic. That’s not the only reason I like her, but it’s a nice bonus for sure, one I wouldn’t have gotten had I ignored her emails early on. An added benefit of non-A-listers is they get less email, usually have more time, and tend to be more open to new networking relationships.

Chill out: Online relationships, like offline relationships take time to build and grow. Asking favors too early on, frequently bugging a blogger you just met, using spammy behavior, and expecting too much is not chill behavior. Allowing relationships to grow naturally makes for longer lasting connections.

Of course when it comes to networking, there’s always more you could be doing. What are some of your best ideas for networking that meets your specific blog’s needs?

Wanted: Someone Who Gets It

by Deb Ng

Warning: Brief rant up ahead.

The other day I had a frustrating talk with someone about building community around a website. He’s going for celebrities and shock value rather than reach out to bloggers and social media, even though the bloggers and social media experts embraced the business early on. He called bloggers “amateur hour.” (Hint: Don’t wonder why no one is blogging about you, if you dismiss bloggers as amateurs.) I submit we can give you something the expensive, hot shot P. R. firms can’t.

Now that more businesses are looking to build up community and need to create a web presence, old school bloggers, especially those who are consulting or working outside the blogosphere, are going to run into more of this. I get that. But I wish more folks would at least try and understand what we do and why we do it.

Here’s the thing, if you’re going to hire me as someone to help you liase with bloggers, don’t ask me to hug them one minute and insult them the next. You can’t have it both ways. We’re not just here you need someone to write about you. Visit our blogs, talk with us on Twitter, seek us out at conferences…and you’ll find that we have a lot to offer. Bloggers create buzz around products, offer how-to’s and tools for making things work and foster community. Moreover, if we think a product, or the people behind a product suck, we’re the one’s who will write about it in a negative manner.

If you hire a blogger to help create a community, build up your brand, and give you a web presence, hear us out. Some of us know what we’re talking about or we wouldn’t have made it this far.

That is all…

Social networking is fuzzy – what’s your take?

I was making a list of social networking methods for blogs, plus discussing it with Deb, and I realized that some of the methods I use are pretty fuzzy. Many social activities cross over with blog promotion and the other way around, and it all mixes up with building your own blog community. For example, if someone finds you through Technorati and you become pals and maybe score a gig through that friendship, is it blog promotion, or are you doing a little networking? Fuzzy business.

That said, I’m going to cover some blog networking methods over the next few posts, but some of the methods we’ll look at may cross over into blog promotion. Although networking is fuzzy, here’s my take. If you’re a blogger, you need to get out there, connect, and interact with others. If you do that, you’ll not only be networking, but promoting your blog.

Here is a sample of what you’ll see if you look up “social networking” online:
Read more

How Much Time Do You Spend on Social Media and Social Networking Promotion?

If you know me, you know I spend lots of time on Twitter. I also spend time at various other social networking and social media sites and forums. When I first began working from home, social networking was a way to stave off loneliness as I was missing the camaraderie from my office jobs. Now, I find it an absolute must if I want to turn others on to my blog posts and podcasts.

I spend at least a good hour each day visiting different social networking sites to chat or share links. I discussed this with many others while at BlogWorld last weekend and we all felt it was well worth it. In fact, for my podcasts and many of my blogs posts, Twitter is a top referrer of traffic.

I’m going to be getting more into social media and social networking here in the upcoming days. We’ll be discussing tips for visiting social networking sites, whether it’s important, the best sites for your blogs, how to be active in forums, how to get other bloggers to link to you and more. In the meantime, I’d love to know how much time you spend social networking. Do you find it’s worth the hours you put into it?

Cool it With the Digg Requests

I have this thing about Tupperware and Pampered Chef parties. I rarely go to them. Invitations for these things usually come from people who wouldn’t call me to say hi, invite me out for a drink or even send a Christmas card. Yet somehow I’m a good enough friend to invite over so I can spend my money so the hostess can receive some free merchandise. No thanks.

I feel the same about Digg and Stumble requests. I don’t mind doing them, but if you’re not going to at least drop a line or a Skype to say hello to me now and then, don’t send me your Diggs.  I find this so annoying.

I don’t mind doing favors for my friends. Indeed there are plenty of people I’m happy to give up the Digg love for. There are a few others who are wearing out their social media welcome. These are people who I know only slightly or who only contact me if it’s to ask me to promote something. I don’t think so.

Here’s a good rule of thumb, if you’re sending a Digg request to someone you barely even speak to, think again. It’s kind of rude to only come calling when you need a favor.