Online social networking - business or personal

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Fiona Powell 2 on April 20, 2010 at 20:18

Hi Lynnaire
Great question :)
I believe when it comes to social media/networking, there are no hard and fast rules... getting amongst it all and experimenting is more important.
For me, Facebook profiles I think are definitely for friends and family - facebook fan pages are for business.
Unfortunately Facebook does not allow 2 profiles - one for biz and one for personal :)
I have separate blogs for business and personal and the same for my twitter accounts.
But even your business persona needs to have personality; your opinions, your 'self'...
I follow some amazing business people on twitter and they inject their personality without adding to the meaningless 'white noise' of cyberspace; they manage to share their 'self' but still be entertaining or informing (adding value to me) with each tweet or blog post, and I love that.

Permalink Reply by Tatiana (Taty) Hindes on April 20, 2010 at 20:29

Hi Lynnaire:
With Facebook, you normally have a 'personal' page where you post your family photos, etc. That is your main account. Then from there, you can create 'business pages' which are totally separate from your personal.
I still have not done the 'business page' which by the way, is the one you can add to your profile in this BNI website.

With twitter, I write very personal stuff, as well as just sharing something interesting I have found. I guess I use it pretty much like Debbie Mayo-Smith (from your comment above).

I am interested in networking with people who in a way, will be interested in me as a person, as well as a business. Mainly because I love doing business with people I know at a more personal level, such as BNI members that I see every week at our meetings.

As this is all new way of communicating, we can really make anything we want out of it.

One example of personal and business: I follow a business in Facebook. After a couple of weeks of me participating on this page (leaving comments), I was invited by the person running this business page, to be her 'friend' and she gave me access to her 'personal' Facebook page. As we have very similar businesses, I enjoy reading and seeing her 'personal life' activities.. like 'going on holiday' or 'went for a walk'....

I love this 'connection' and will love to do business with her if the opportunity arises. Because an emotional connection has been established as 'just friends' activities. But I guess, this is about the type of person I am.

I will be interested in following you in twitter as I know your passion are words!

Permalink Reply by Andrew Haddleton on April 20, 2010 at 21:22

Hi Lynaire

Yep, it's a confusing world alright. in social media land.

Being honest, I just don't "get" Twiitter. There's so much noise, junk and irrelevance.

I started on Facebook a while back but I didn't engage mainly because my friend and family weren't om it. Metcalfe's Law in action :-). Those who were engaging were business related and other marketers so my profile is a mix of personal and business.


I haven't created my FB Fan page for my business yet but that's because I've been focusing on LinkedIn which is purely for business. Sure it's good to know people as individuals but by engaging on LI in Groups, discussions etc, you can develop a sense of how people think in a business way, which is our main goal in this part of our lives.

So, keep Facebook for personal stuff and use LinkedIn for business.

I'm now starting to get enquiries from members around the globe for Internet marketing and SEO projects.

You must be patient though and above all, take part.

Permalink Reply by Lynnaire Johnston on April 20, 2010 at 21:30

Hi Tatiana

Thanks for such great ideas and suggestions. My problem is that I'm passionate about words, cars, books, plants, movies, friends ... you get the drift. I wish I knew how to separate them all - or not, as the case may be. But if you'd like to follow me on Twitter you can do so at http://twitter.com/wordwizardnz. It would be great to have you.

Best
Lynnaire

Tatiana (Taty) Hindes said:

Hi Lynnaire:
With Facebook, you normally have a 'personal' page where you post your family photos, etc. That is your main account. Then from there, you can create 'business pages' which are totally separate from your personal.
I still have not done the 'business page' which by the way, is the one you can add to your profile in this BNI website.

With twitter, I write very personal stuff, as well as just sharing something interesting I have found. I guess I use it pretty much like Debbie Mayo-Smith (from your comment above).

I am interested in networking with people who in a way, will be interested in me as a person, as well as a business. Mainly because I love doing business with people I know at a more personal level, such as BNI members that I see every week at our meetings.

As this is all new way of communicating, we can really make anything we want out of it.

One example of personal and business: I follow a business in Facebook. After a couple of weeks of me participating on this page (leaving comments), I was invited by the person running this business page, to be her 'friend' and she gave me access to her 'personal' Facebook page. As we have very similar businesses, I enjoy reading and seeing her 'personal life' activities.. like 'going on holiday' or 'went for a walk'....

I love this 'connection' and will love to do business with her if the opportunity arises. Because an emotional connection has been established as 'just friends' activities. But I guess, this is about the type of person I am.

I will be interested in following you in twitter as I know your passion are words!

Permalink Reply by Andy Schmidt on May 27, 2010 at 10:50

Interesting forum, I've recently started doing both on Twitter (a business-based account and a personal one). And generally I follow 'people' on my personal one and other businesses on my business one. I do try and add a bit of a personal/human touch to the business one as well, I guess the potential problem is you could easily say something on your business one that may end up insulting or turing off someone somewhere. But then maybe the reverse could happen too! As I say it's an interesting question, I'm fairly new to this so I guess time, trial and error will tell.
BTW if anyone wants to follow, is @ActivePhysioAlb for work and @AndySchmidtNZ for personal!
Cheers

Permalink Reply by Melissa Manson on August 5, 2010 at 19:09

I think it comes down to what type of business you are in. We are reliant on the masses to grow our businesses but do they really need to know that you just bought a chicken on Farmville? Probably not.

By creating a business page on Facebook, which you can do for free, you are telling the masses, including your friends & family, that you are a SERIOUS business. You can take the opportunity to become the guru in your field and point your Facebook traffic back to you actual website.

If you're a chatter, put articles and the like on your website and link to them from your business page. The search engines love this and consider your website more important for it.

I'm sure Fiona's workshop on Social Media will clear some of these things up so be sure to mark yourself in for it! I'll be at the Christchurch one!

BIG NOTE: Be sure to 'Like' your business page so it can circulate through your personal network!

Cheers & happy networking
Melissa