Social Media: The Public Private Pendulum

Last week, in my column I wrote that reputation management is one of the issues
causing conflict for business owners when considering social media. Another
recurring concern is the blur between business and personal on-line.

The issue of privacy in social networking is a hot one. For most people, their social
media is based on personal connections with friends, family and colleagues with
whom we are comfortable with sharing personal details.  The thought of broadening
our networks for business can make some shudder with the possibility of personal
information and images lingering in oblivion to be seized at any moment by someone
with much less veracity than ourselves.

This presents an interesting quandary for people who want to use social media for
both personal and professional purposes. Do you juggle separate personal and
business profiles for each of these networks? Or should you use one account that
merges both your professional brand and your personal life?

How you use these social networks depends on your objectives when mixing
business and personal information. Ultimately, even if you maintain separate
personal and professional identities online, any information you share online can be
made public or accessible to others.

Amid the excitement of sharing don’t let the public-private pendulum swing too far
to public. It’s about having awareness of how much information we’re disclosing via
social networks.  While sharing experiences and ideas is a key part of what makes
social media so powerful, think more about what is being broadcasted and who can
see it.

It is also, extremely important to be aware of the terms and conditions for individual
social media sites, they are all different. Twitter is clear, what you say on an open
account is public and linkable. Whereas Facebook has changed constantly since it
started. Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been quoted as not
believing in online privacy.

The safest thing is to just assume that anything you write or forward online, will be
seen by someone, who may pass it along to someone else. In other words, don't post
anything on the web that you wouldn't say in front of your mum.

If you are not concerned about mixing business and personal personas, just use one
profile on all your social networks. However if you want to keep your work and
personal lives separate, use either multiple accounts or different networks for
different purposes.