Personal Vs. Professional Social Media

If you are looking to promote your brand, social media is a fantastic source. Should you be able to execute your social media marketing strategy well, you have the opportunity to reach your target audience in new and incredible ways. This will help you reach success at a fast rate. However, if you don’t use social media properly, it can hinder your businesses success. Did you know that using your company’s social media inappropriately can ruin your businesses reputation? It’s true! So many businesses have been ruined due to an ill-planned tweet or post, and it’s important to keep in mind that you can’t always fix a ruined business reputation.

When it comes to using social media to brand your business, it is definitely worth the risk as the opportunity that lies within it is endless. There are more than 3.8 billion people that use social media currently. Learning to balance between personal and professional posts is a fine art that needs to be strategized and thought out in order to not make a mistake that crumbles what your business as diligently worked to pursue.

Your business needs social media, but you also have to know how to stop yourself before you make a mistake of epic proportions.

Benefits of Social Media

There are so many benefits to using social media for your growing business. For example, networking to maintain and develop relationships. It is incredibly easy to send someone a message on your social networks, making it a truly convenient method of communication.

Social media also allows you to build new connections based on the social circles you are apart of. This allows you to not only grow your business, but it allows you the opportunity to discover new brands, artists, or even special offers for products or services.

Disadvantages of Social Media

Disadvantages of social media are important to understand so that it helps you not make an error that could affect your career. One advantage is not knowing how to separate your professional and personal use on social media. At iStart, we recommend having two different accounts. One account for your business and one account for your personal use. That way you ensure that you are always sending the correct message for your business brand to help you gain business.

Sometimes you will find a professional contact ask to be friends on your personal account. This can make for a sticky situation. It’s hard to deny those requests, because you want them to like you enough to continue doing business with you. BUT, you don’t want to risk offending them with posts or banter you choose to engage your friends with. This can lead to a loss of a professional connection.

Social Media Boundaries

When you have not crafted a clear definition of personal and professional social media, you can almost guarantee that you will damage professional relationships that can truly hinder the success of your business. Accepting a client as a personal contact can change their mindset about what you have to offer them, damaging your credibility in the process.

People are fickle. They may decide they don’t like you, and then that means they don’t like your business. Everyone has a strong outlook on life, and your posts may not seem offensive to you, but they can be to others. If you are allowing your customers to be your friend on your personal page, consider yourself on the clock, and to not post things reflecting your personal views anymore.

Sexual Harassment

A study from NPR found that 81% of women have experienced sexual harassment on social media. When you choose to open your social media account to customers, you may be risking falling victim to scary things. It is incredibly easy for people to find information about your personal information through platforms such as Facebook. They may even be able to figure out where you live and places you frequent. This can put you at risk. Staying behind your business account on social media is the only way to stay safe.

Damage to Your Credibility

There is no need to deny that we feel more relaxed in what we post on our personal accounts. You may post about the wild night out you had, or the political candidate you dislike. It is your right to post that kind of information on your personal account, BUT if you have customers who have access to your account your business could lose credibility. Be who you want to be and say what you want to say on your personal account, just ensure that your customers are not privy to that information.

3 Tips to Avoid Damaging Your Professional Reputation

In order to avoid crossing any lines, here are some tips to help you avoid damaging your professional reputation through your personal account. There are countless numbers of people who have lost their jobs, or their incredible careers because they said the wrong thing on social media. There are movements right now where people are going out of their way to take individuals down who are at the top of their game. If you are a popular individual, you are at risk. That is just a sad reality of this world we live in. With that said, keep your professional page on point, and keep your private page private. This will help you easily draw the line between customers and friends.

1. Use Caution When Posting About Work

You want to ensure that you always prioritize protecting your clients privacy. Posting about interactions with clients can be taken poorly, even if you are just trying to tell your friends a funny story about something that happened. NEVER POST ANYTHING that happened in a closed door meeting. If you do this, there is a good chance someone you know may know the client and tell them what you said; thus shooting yourself in the foot.

On the same note, you should never post frustrations with customers, colleagues, or your workplace either. That is not professional behavior, and it can certainly get you in a ton of trouble. This type of behavior will ensure that you are not seen in a good light, and could damage your reputation in the process.

2. Avoid Being Offensive

There are so many ways to offend people. You may think that a joke is really funny, but it can come across as racist, sexist, or LGBTQ+ phobic, leaving your followers offended. It is so important to have compassion for your public, as that is what will bring you a fantastic customer base. If you offend people for who they are, you might as well close your doors.

3. Use Social Media Tools

There are so many people who choose not to use personal social media due to privacy reasons, or the addiction that can potentially stem from it. But it is important for you to know that there are so many great tools that can help you post often to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your growing companies digital presence.

We hope that these helpful hints and reminders allow you to better distinguish you personal and professional world online. At iStart, we still recommend that you keep your personal and professional relationships separate when it comes to the world of social media, but if you choose to combine the two know that you are selling yourself (to some degree) all the time. Don’t risk your businesses success by not being thoughtful in the posts you make.