Mixing Business and Pleasure Can Sometimes Go Too Far

Do You Keep Your Social Media Profiles Separate?. Mixing Business and Pleasure Can Sometimes Go Too Far. In some cases it may be wise to keep social network profiles separate from each other. What I mean by this is that business shouldn't always be mixed with pleasure. I don't mean this in the same way that the Wall Street Journal meant itall business should be mixed with all pleasure. Do you keep your social media profiles separate from each other? Tell us.

I am a firm believer that the two should be mixed within your social media efforts. For example, if all of your tweets or Facebook status updates are only promoting your product, "friends" are likely to quickly lose interest. That is one reason why injecting a little personality and a touch of your own life is usually the way to go.

In fact, in many instances, it's even wiser to keep it personal mostly and inject a little bit of business. The more your social media habits are about you, the less sales-pitchy your efforts will seem. It all of course depends on what your goals are. What works well for one company maybe a completely different strategy than what works for another.

It is often hard to strike the right balance between business and pleasure on social media. It becomes harder the more "friends" you make. In business, it's easy to forget that social networks are for personal use too.

When mixing business and pleasure goes wrong is when something from your personal life that others need not know about gets thrown into the mix, or when you're annoying your real life friends by marketing to them.

You may find that keeping your social networks separate is a good strategy for you. Perhaps all of your friends and family are on Facebook, but not on Twitter, but you have all kinds of business contacts on Twitter, not to mention an ever-growing supply of potential customers. In this case, maybe you should focus more of your marketing/business networking efforts on Twitter. This will spare your true friends and family your marketing strategy.

Granted, there are privacy settings that can be adjusted in Facebook, and lists set up, and whatnot. But it can be a lot of minutia to deal with within the already large and complex field of social media marketing. however. Perhaps a better way to put it would be not

And I'm talking about your personal Facebook profile, by the way. I can't imagine too many social media strategies where Facebook doesn't play some part. It is after all the largest social network in the world. There are always Facebook "Pages" for businesses (not that it should always be limited to this either).

This is only one example anyway. Again, different strategies for different businesses (consider your goals). In addition, there are plenty of other social networks that can be utilized for business or personal reasons.

Just keep these things in mind:

• Do you want your Facebook Friends and Twitter friends to receive the same messages? (something to consider when using apps)
• Not all friends are going to be interested in your business messages
• Likewise, your business friends aren't always going to be interested in your personal life

The point I'm really trying to make here is that you have to think about your audience in each network. It's kind of an extension of the mentality from my Be Careful What You Tweet For post. Sometimes it might be wise to keep your networks separate. Sometimes integration is a much better strategy. Either way, you have to think ahead and anticipate the outcome. And don't forget about those privacy settings. You don't want to become one of tomorrow's headlines for a social media faux pas. ( webpronews.com )

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