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?
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