But today I have a topic which touches a bit on my work life, so the wall between the two aspects of my life in social media will crumble a bit. And that, as it turns out, is the point.
Which of these people am I?
OR
The guy on the left is a leader in part of the technology industry, but to read this blog, you'd never really know that. That's how I intended it. From the beginning, Snippets and Wisps was meant to be a place where I could write about the parts of my life which are not related to my job.
The guy on the right is a gamer, a sci-fi fan, a lover of Great Courses and movies. And of course, the guy on the right is also this guy:
(I enjoy finding an opportunity to put a photo of my beautiful wife in this blog.)
Well, obviously, I am both of these people. For various reasons, I have kept them separate when it comes to social media. This blog and my Facebook account have been devoted to my personal life. Meanwhile, the blog I write for work never talks about the movies I like, games I play, etc. And rather than using Facebook, I use LinkedIn as the "social" means to connect with people for business purposes.
Then there is Twitter. When I started using Twitter, I created @Steve_Will and decided to let that be the "non-work" me -- that's the Twitter ID I use to advertise Snippets and Wisps, and the ID I use to follow celebrities and a few friends. (Very few of my friends use Twitter, as it turns out. [Welcome to the Twitterverse, @MichaelHacker58.]) I use a different ID for information I want to share about technology/work topics. As social media has grown, it's been harder to keep that separation, but I've done it pretty well so far.
Well, the wall I've built over the past several years between these two parts of my social life is showing signs of cracking. I am receiving more and more Facebook "friend" requests from people who only know "of" me. They have heard of me through work, and they might even be friends of people who are Facebook friends of mine, but they are not friends of mine. To this point, I generally just leave their requests alone. And perhaps I will continue to do that. And my personal Twitter account has many followers who are clearly finding me because of my job, so I just let them know that they should probably be following the other ID. But I've begun to feel a bit constrained by this. If someone is following me expecting news about the operating system I represent, what will they think getting directed here, to this blog? Do they really want to know what music or Great Course I am listening to? Worse, if I express a political or religious view, will people get angry or upset with my company or our products? These give me some pause. And the situation is about to compound on itself, I think.
Soon, my work organization will be using Facebook for a "Big Thing." I am heavily involved in that "Big Thing" and I am personally very passionate about it. I am pretty sure this particular business use of Facebook will cause my Facebook presence to become even more visible to customers, business partners and so on.
So I am reevaluating my social presence. Professionally, I need to be active in social media, and I cannot have the things I do for personal expression negatively affect that part of my job. At the same time, I really enjoy blogging here, and while Facebook does have its issues, I definitely like it for keeping in touch with most of my family and most of my good friends.
If any of my readers have some experience keeping personal and professional life separate in this age of social media, I would be happy to hear your stories and advice.
But I have to admit, no matter how well I am able to manage these two sides of my social networking life, I am always going to envy how this guy does it.
.
Nathan Fillion is amazing. I'm just sayin'.
6 comments:
You are too famous to find good advice from me. Seriously. No one who reads my FB page would ever conflate any of my posts with my employer's opinion. I don't post about my work anywhere for two reasons:
1) I don't represent my employer in any capacity whatsoever, so I don't post industry related stuff.
2) The audience for any midrange programming related posts is virtually absent from all social media so I don't post programming stuff.
On the other hand, I'm not at all convinced that anyone is going to find a post of mine damning the ending of BSG or praising the melodies of Pearl and the Beard to be remotely related to the interests of my employer.
Do people who use social media in 2013 really conflate everything you write to be Really Truly Official Corporate Opinion Of IBM?
I myself think that the quality of your writing speaks volumes more than the subject matter. Well written reviews, philosophical musings or even travelogues are a joy to read and don't remotely impugn the reputation of your employer. It seems to me that the balance you've struck seems to be working.
For me personally, I have also tried to keep that separation between work and the rest of my life. I typically am not facebook friends with people that I work with. If my employer told be that I had to use my facebook id for something work related, I think I would get another facebook id.
Now technically, people are not supposed to have more than one facebook id, but I would feel compelled to make one anyway that used my work email and had a lot less information (if any) about my personal life.
I am neither a person who bashes my employer online nor someone who tends to represent my employer. So maybe I'm being more careful than I need to be, but I like to keep that separation.
Great description of what may be a common conundrum, although maybe rarely to your degree.
If only people were clearly divided into work-acquaintances and non-work friends, it would be easy.
In your case, Steve, I agree with Buck's last paragraph.
Buck, thanks for the nice words about the writing and the blog.
I have read about people who wrote something in a blog, entirely unrelated to their jobs, but which was objectionable enough that it caused problems with the employer.
I guess I will have to avoid that. But then again, it's hard to imagine I'd be writing such a piece anyway.
Thanks for reading, and the comments.
bigdog, I received the same piece of advice from another source after this blog went live. I will have to consider it. I don't want to start sharing lots of work stuff on Facebook -- it would be very annoying to most of my friends and family there. But I do want to support the things my job will be doing on Facebook.
Thanks for the comment.
Barbara, I appreciate your comment. And you're right -- life is not so cut-and-dry between work and non-work. I definitely have friends through work -- obviously. :-) Some people start out as work acquaintances and become friends!
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