Do you "friend" your co-workers, clients, or service recipients on Facebook? What about LinkedIn? Are your tweets appropriate for all audiences? Andrew Heller discussed the risks of oversharing in his NTEN blog post Social Media and Privacy: Best Practices for Managing Your Personal and Professional Identities. His basic advice: "Be Prepared. Be mindful of your online presence. Think thrice before acting." He provides an extensive list of best practices and privacy options for using social media. In his blog post Separating Personal and Professional Networks Online, Andy Shandlain lamented that "separating personal and professional networks can be a desirable, but elusive goal." His article and the comments provide some suggestions about how to separate the two. I like the advice passed along by the Red Cross’s Wendy Harman at the recent NTEN conference: "If I wouldn’t go out for a beer with you and pay for a round, then I probably won’t friend you in Facebook."
Aaron R says
I like what Wendy Harman said. I saw something similar about what to post and what not to post online; If you wouldn’t want grandma or your employer to read it, don’t write it.
Though it may be a somewhat “elusive goal” to keep personal and professional lives completely separate online, we can come close. I like to keep personal things on FB and professional things on linkedIn and my business web site.