Back in high school, one of my teachers told the class that he never had a glass of wine when he went out to dinner with his wife. It wasn’t because he didn’t drink, he said, but rather because if he were pulled over on the way home, a DUI would tarnish his reputation in the community and ruin his chances of becoming principal someday. I remember thinking, the guy never stops being a disciplinarian – an example for others. He never lets loose.
And I knew that day that I never wanted a profession where I couldn’t have a regular life after work.
10 years later, the entire world is doing exactly what my former teacher (now high school principal) did to manage his career. Nowadays, everyone has a personal brand – a way to demonstrate value to others quickly and succinctly. And everyone’s personal brand seems to combine professional pursuits with interests and hobbies, blending the traditional worker and his relationships into a 24/7 experience put on display for all to see.
And yet, there seems to be an ongoing war between the people who use social media for personal relationships and the people who use social media for business. The personal side looks at the others and says, “Man, stop selling your stuff to us, we just want to chat with each other and be cool,” and the business side replies, “Dudes, why are you investing so much effort – working so hard at this social media thing – if you can’t eventually feed yourself from it?”
I use my accounts for both personal and professional – but I know from the feedback I get that I have a “personal branding issue.” My clients complain that I tweet too much about things they don’t care about with people they don’t know. My friends who knew me before I was consulting complain that I’m not fun, that all I ever do is talk about what I’m reading and learning, and that I never share my personal stories on my blog anymore – the reason they initially subscribed.
Personal branding is a conundrum for most people – we don’t want to be boring or sales-ish or an expert and we don’t want to be wild or gossipy or strange, and the two words are unmashable, like trying to force two magnets with opposite charges to touch. There is no win, no way to talk to people in our personal and professional lives the same way.
But it has to be done, because there is also no way to separate our personal lives from our professional ones. So here are my thoughts on how to handle the issue:
Accept that social media is a marketplace.
Everyone has something to sell, even the cool kids. Maybe it’s a website – maybe they are trying to get a promotion at work. Maybe they are just trying to cure self-esteem issues with @replies and comments, or maybe they have a product that they want you to purchase. The sooner we all accept this, the better.
Use Twitter and Facebook and your blog to both sell stuff and to talk to friends.
People think they don’t want to be friends with anyone who is a salesperson. But nobody want to buy something from a robot, so part of personal branding is learning how to sell to your friends without damaging the friendship. I write about online marketing mostly, but not always – I sometimes write about eating chocolate before a work out, or Obama winning the Nobel Peace prize. I want to be friends with you, but I also want to tell you what I’m up to professionally.
Refrain from ranting on social media, even if you would in real life to your friends.
I don’t think the world is a better place when people say what they want, rather than what’s nice. I refrain from ranting not because I’m afraid of confrontation, but because some of my clients can find it – and I want them to trust me, not think I’m an insane person with a bad attitude who can’t control her emotions.
Realize it’s expensive to be flippant.
Like this writer I know, who writes about sex a lot. But she represents a company, and sometimes when she writes about sex one of the potential partner companies calls to pull out of a deal. Negative ROI, baby.
To end, I leave you with a great quote I found today:
“You might think that going for years without ‘pitching’ anything would endear you to your audience. But in fact, it tends to just make them cranky when you finally get around to asking for the sale.” ~ Sonia Simone
How do you combine personal and professional online?
Monica O'Brien is the Director of Digital at Fizz and author of the book Social Pollination, which helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth!
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 76 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
So if I write about not writing about sex, does that man I'm writing about sex?
OH NOES!
Maybe it's the reference to what I would have assumed was Penelope Trunk (writer who talks about sex and represents a company). But I'm guessing not since you seem pretty clueless.
Ah, gotcha. No, that is Penelope. I used to work for her company and it happened a few times while I was there (wasn't actually a huge deal though).
I didn't censor her name because I'm secretly slamming her, and I think she would know that. I did it just because the details are not important to the post (and I don't think it's that obvious unless you follow Penelope's blog closely, which I wouldn't assume of my readers.)
You could figure out who my high school principal was too, but again, wasn't important to the story, so left it out.
I assumed the anon. comment was geared more towards that I was writing about someone who ranted online all the time or something. Which, yeah, the post isn't about anyone specific.
Excellent post, Monica. I've made a conscious choice to narrow the gap between personal and professional profiles. Rabbiting on about the fragile beauty of a draped dress would seem completely at odds with the B2B marketer side of me, but happily enough it's been a blessing: I'm forming less but richer and more substantive business relationships. These people have checked me out online and get from my online cookie crumb trail that I want to work only with game changers. It comes as no surprise then that what we have in common goes so much further than work, and that even before we met there was commitment to a shared cause, culture and legacy. Please continue writing these thought-provoking posts. I thoroughly enjoy them.
It seems like you can separate and have two different audiences – no matter what though, you have to maintain a somewhat clean or professional appearance on each site. At least I would feel that I had to.
I really like the idea of using Tumblr or Posterous for more fun topics, less business blog topics.
Haha, I guess. Wasn't the intention.
I like your concept of balance. People struggle with the concept of balance, but it's like you said – pitch sometimes, talk about your interests sparingly, and please never tell me about your daily routine.
Corbett, that's basically the problem I had. Plus maintaining two different accounts was a pain. I didn't have time to do both so I usually didn't do either out of guilt. I've consolidated much of my online presence now.
Thanks Abby! Glad it helped you.
Andrew, that's probably true. It probably changes when you are interviewing for jobs or applying to graduate school though. I feel like I've probably not gotten jobs because of my blog, which I'm okay with – but I'm sure many people are not.
I always think of you as helpful and funny, so no worries about the
“persona” you're giving off
Alicia, I like how you write “narrowing the gap between personal and professional.” I think it's where the future is headed, and organizations will have to accept people as whole, not just look at their work experience.
I really do see a fundamental shift. You are right that we will start working with people who share multiple interests – both professional and personal.
I kinda view it like people can pick and choose what parts of the content I generate they are interested in and then subscribe to only those parts. Nothing I do is too off the wall, thats just my nature, so yes its somewhat clean and professional everywhere. But most people don't want to be inundated with the youtube video I just saw and my political leanings. If they do then they can follow my tumblr, if they don't then they can leave it. Its putting the choice in their hands and making a point that one side is a bit more professional and one side is a bit more personal. I hope in this day and age people can respect the difference and subscribe as they will.
I see a lot of folks talk about the hiring / grad school issue, and maybe that's where I don't get on board. I've worked for the same company for 10 years (before social media really existed in the context it does today) and I have no plans on grad school. Perhaps I'd have a different opinion if I was 5 years younger.
The jury has given their verdicts: The new privacy controls are major fail. If Facebook is lying to me like this I’m going to unfan some pages. Wait. I just did that.
Read the verdicts at http://bit.ly/7kR1hc and http://bit.ly/56PGli.
I think it's largely a matter of calibrating your balance to suit YOUR wants and needs on the Web. If you're there for strictly business, be the consummate professional. If you're there for off-the-cuff social interaction, you can be more fun, and, well, “social”.
However, most people are somewhere in-between and need some experimentation to figure out which balance is congruent with what they're trying to achieve.
I find it hard to mix my personal and professional life online. For most of the things I find online now, I either quickly scan or ignore altogether. I don't care what movie people are watching or how cold it is in another city. I want to read things that are interesting to me.
On the flip side, I don't want to share personal (read that as boring) details about my life. I hope that everything I do online creates value for others.
I would like to make some money online, but I hope to do it as unobtrusively as possible. Maybe that is my problem.
I love hearing your own personal story and issues you find with personal branding. Sharing is a great way to learn and explore new ways to keep creating yourself. Great tips, Monica.
Good points Monica but like one of my favorite quotes “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody”
Bottom line we all have to be true to ourselves and be genuine in our intentions! You seem like a person that stands by that!
wish you the best
As I type I am separating my two online personas… I set up my first blog as a playground and it has established a certain number of followers who like to read about my personal views.
The readers of my personal blog and Twitter accounts could not care less about my business related ideas and thoughts, as I work as an IT consultant. I am now establishing a brand new blog and twitter account(since I was snowed in this weekend) strictly to grow my consulting practice. The two blogs and Twitter accounts will be completely separate from each other, to avoid the very problem you are having. I would never tweet or blog to my business associates about personal topics. My co-workers and clients have no knowledge of my several web sites and blogs. But they will all be pushed toward my new blog and twitter sites to be fed my ideas on business.
I always want to keep my personal blog as a forum to have fun and say what I want… but the business blog is about well… business.
Personal or professional is doe not matter, as long as people can see who you really are and accept you as who you are.
Totally agree, There is a lot more to this, you have got me thinking, Thanks for that. Cheers Jeff Bullas
Great post!
My personal dilemma for a while has been the use of facebook for business contacts. Just lately I've started to accept business contacts as friends in addition to those people I know throught personal life. I just categorize them as a business contacts and adjust the feed/etc. permissions according to what I want them to see. And I'm pretty picky..not every “friend” request gets accepted. Still experimenting though..
What kind of strategies are others using with this subject? Do you use Facebook (your personal account, not your blogs “fan page”) to connect with both, personal and business contacts?
Good post, Monica. My friend Jim (@ocdqblog) just told me about your site and I like what I've read so far.
I agree that it's hard to make everyone happy.
I try to use LinkedIn for purely professional “news”, although I''m sure that I sneak in the occasional Rush reference. I try not to put too much controversial stuff on Facebook because, as you know, it's not exactly difficult to share a, um, “compromising” photo with others.
The line between work and leisure has been eroding for years, even before Web 2.0 came about. I don't see that trend reverting any time soon.
By virtue of being a student, there's no money for me on the line if I tweet about my personal life. On the other hand, there are a lot of industry people I respect who follow me on Twitter–not to mention that my Twitter is the first result on Google for “Jeannie Harrell”–and I wouldn't want to compromise a future job or internship based on what I've tweeted about. I've been socializing on the web (I guess chatrooms, personal websites, forums, etc. could be considered proto-social media?) since I was about 8 or 9, and I'm not used to thinking about how an online remark might affect me professionally.
I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could market myself as something of a social media guru/expert/consultant. I have a lot of experience and I read a lot about social media, so I've picked up a lot of expertise. But it seems uncomfortable to me, and I think it's because I like Twitter, Facebook, etc. too much as a personal social tool. If everything in this world could go my way, I'd want money to stay out of social media–money is power, and power corrupts. Using social media as a sales/marketing tool makes the web less of an open, equalizing forum and more of a marketplace.
Great post!! It certainly is a challenge for many and a very hot topic!
Great post!! It certainly is a challenge for many and a very hot topic!
← Previous Comments