The college days
I was first introduced to the power of Facebook during my junior year of college. I remember it like it was just yesterday. My friend came running down the hall saying “I just got Facebook for our school.” Of course my first question was “what the heck is Facebook”? He explained it to me and forced me to view the website on his computer. I completely blew it off and he tried to recruit many other friends in the dormitory to very little success. It wasn’t until the middle of the semester when many of us had very little work and a lot of time on our hands. We decided to enroll in Facebook and see how it would make our social lives easier. One year later, as a senior in college, students were using it to communicate with high school friends and also created events that others could sign up for on campus. In general, Facebook was simple and effective, with very little clutter and with the ability to catalog photo’s from social events the night before.
Welcome to the business world!
If you had told me that Facebook would be for organizing, collecting and connecting with professionals, I would have laughed in college. Facebook was branded and positioned as a tool for college students to keep in touch. A lot has changed since then, as Facebook has opened up their platform to the world (yes high school students and 80 year olds can even sign up). They have even allowed users to develop their own applications within Facebook, how clever. There are now thousands of widgets handpicked and placed on different profile pages. Professionals are now leveraging the platform to build their client database and reach new customers.
Now for the issues
Facebook is a place for your professional and personal lives now. It has evolved and broadened it’s audience, to increase the installed base. For college students that used Facebook pre-business days, our concerns are real. How would you like it if you established a social “friend” network and then had your manager and advertisers adding you as a friend and sending you messages? What about the fact that instead of “light” pages, there were numerous widgets all over, cluttering the page? Yes, for those who are just starting out, you weren’t there when Facebook was simple and social. Of course as an entrepreneur who was just introduced to the platform, you will use it for business, but for the original college students, there are issues. We are also in a position, where we are forced to set privacy preferences because we don’t want business contacts to see our social life. I see this as both a threat and an opportunity.
Your turn
- Do you feel that both parts of your life have been integrated and exposed through social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace?
- If yes, what strategies do you have in place to counter this exposure?
- If no, do you think it’s beneficial to match your personal and professional life to establish one consistent personal brand?
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- Reference: Impersonation Policies for Top Social Networks I hope you never have to worry about anyone trying...
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While I respect the many people who have merged their professional and personal lives, I need distinct buckets for each, creating a wall between the two. I would only be comfortable with Facebook professionally if I had fully distinct, separate and bucketed profiles, not just separate friend groups.
Facebook has a lot of potential and I would value a central dashboard for managing both, but I don’t want my business contacts knowing they are only business contacts and not “friends”. I would need seperate buckets for each, with seperate screen names and all.
Towards that end, aren’t we really looking at a separate system? How about creating a new platform called Facebook Pro that interfaces with your Facebook account through a central dashboard?
I guess I’m still in the 60′s when it comes to online paranoia. I’m all over the web, socializing on my own, blogging but to be honest, I’ve never even been to FaceBook, MySpace reminds me of a noisy cafeteria.
I just don’t get it yet, I guess…
IS FB really have involvement with the CIA/FBI?
I think about this intersection (love that photo you’ve used, it’s perfect) all the time. I signed up for Facebook for professional reasons, but found the personal creeping in constantly. I tried to stem the tide, but eventually gave up. Facebook’s recent announcement that it will give users the ability to group their contacts will be a welcome change.
The best advice is to just use common sense, and err on the side of caution without voiding your personality. I just got back from vacation, and added an album of photos. My friends and I are holding drinks in many of the photos. Is that “bad”? I had to think about it before I uploaded, and decided that the mere act of having a beer or umbrella drink in my hand while on a cruise shouldn’t offend the sensibilities of my professional contacts. But that pause is what’s important, and is smack int he middle of your diagram.
I think this merge has its benefits. I think getting to know the personality of a contact is essential–a sanitized Facebook page or Twitter tweets with zero “zest” would be boring, and would probably turn me off to the contact. Part of what makes social media networking so brilliant for professional purposes is that added spark, getting to see the person behind the CV. We’re all human, after all.
That being said: I advise anyone who asks to just use their brains. A photo of me on vacation with a beer in my hand? Fine. A photo of someone at a bachelor party with nudity/various debauchery/potentially illegal activity going on? Not so much.
It’s about common sense.
The privacy settings are critical to your personal brand reputation.
Personally, I was a bit disappointed when Facebook opened up to EVERYONE. College is my own little world and now it’s being invaded by professors, parents, employers, and my little sister.
With the evolution of social networks, I am becoming more comfortable with my digital identity taking over my personal one. Maybe this is because I am embracing it as opposed to resisting it, or maybe because I know it’s inevitable.
When you think about it, one of the most powerful elements in creating a strong brand is Consistency. When you have one site telling a professional story and another site telling the opposite one, people won’t believe your brand.
To successfully brand oneself, I think it’s a necessity to have one consistant digital brand… or just don’t join multiple soical networks.
Hope all is well, Dan!
Great stuff, I love the diagram at the top… that nails it! Keep up the info.
Randy
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