As I mentioned in my first blog post, I’m going to try to use my blog as a space to reflect my personal thoughts, not professional thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and have a great career but I’ve always struggled with where to draw the work/personal line in the sand. So excuse me as I reflect a little bit on how exactly to do just that.
As a business development professional I am in the business of building relationships. I’m a connector. I introduce great companies to great PR people and watch great things come out of it. I’m fully aware that every interaction I make with a potential client and current clients must be a valuable one to demonstrate that not only are the account team members knowledgable, but that I am too.
Great, but what happens as my prospects and clients start to friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and ask me why I haven’t checked in on FourSquare lately? At a previous job I built my personal brand online because my company didn’t have a Twitter handle or blog, so I acted as an extension of the company’s marketing initiatives and became an expert in their space. But now, my company has a Facebook page and Twitter handle, one managed by a team of staffers and the other managed by one of our principals. So, now what? Since most of my interactions with prospects are confidential, I can’t really say what I’m doing at any given time on the social networks and most of the time, I don’t want Twitterland, FourSquare or Facebook friends to know what I’m doing or where I am on a professional level, because I don’t want my competitors to know my strategy and who I could be talking to. So, if I can’t talk about our strategies publically or tell people where I’m going and what I’m up to professionally…how do I effectively build a professional personal brand? All I’m left with is my true personal brand, myself. Can you see why I feel like my personal brand has a split personality?
So should I break up with tools like LifeStream, which updates my AIM, Twitter (which updates my LinkedIn,) and Facebook all at the same time and use each social network separately yet strategically? Let’s face it, my husband, family and friends don’t really want to learn about SEO, PR and marketing and my prospects and clients could care less that my road trip home from my sister-in-laws house took 5 hours longer than it should have.
I’m curious, how do you manage your professional brand and personal brand? Where do you draw your line in the sand?
The Melanie Collins Blog 
Melanie- You have a great point there, and really relevant questions. It’s really interesting you bring this up because I think a lot of people struggle with exactly how much is the right amount to put out there about yourself? And how do we even know what the “professional” standard is anymore? I think one thing to think about is that it changes every day- people are putting more and more out there all the time about their personal lives- and I think this is going to be the norm with how socially connected we are becoming. I used to “protect my tweets” but then someone brought up an interesting question: “Why do you protect your tweets?” And I asked myself that question, and I thought the answer would be so that not everyone can see what I am writing, but honestly, if your posts are appropriate, what is wrong with broadcasting your messages? Especially if a majority of your content is relevant to your online communities? I’m not talking every little detail, like brushing your teeth, but I think the point is that you really can’t “hide” and pretend to be something that your not, like a staunchy business professional because everyone has a unique personality. I think that the more someone understands your personality and get to know you for you- perhaps that is not such a bad thing in the professional world. It is a bit of a scary thought though, to put yourself out there, don’t you think? Trust me, I contemplate putting my messages out there everyday too.