Blend of Personal & Business Accounts

I am in the midst of a discussion with a couple of friends regarding the division of personal life and professional life and would like some feedback. My blog is primarily a business blog, but I do like to share personal information as well. When I read other blogs, I like to know about the person behind the blog, and I am happy to share information about my background as well. I think it’s only fair that my blog readers know who I am and what I am doing.

I also have a Twitter account, which as the url would suggest (@dinvesting), is an offshoot of my blog. However, I don’t really have any friends who are on Twitter aside from my domaining friends, so I use it as a personal account as well, especially because many of my domain industry friends use Twitter as well. I am not one for sharing intimate details of my personal life with many people, so it’s not exactly a big deal having the mixed account because even the personal stuff is watered down, knowing that anyone can see it.

Facebook, on the other hand, started off as a strictly personal account and has evolved into a joint business account as business acquaintances have “befriended” me. People have added me as friends, some of whom I hardly know or don’t know at all, and I generally accept requests if we have friends in common, despite the fact that I might not know the person, to avoid being rude. I’ve met and become friends with many people via the domain industry, so despite the fact that we didn’t grow up or go to college together, we are still friends.

I must admit that I am getting annoyed by seeing constant self-business promotion via Facebook, as I still consider it more of a personal account. It’s also annoying when Facebook “friends” seem to combine their Twitter and Facebook accounts and do retweets and other stuff on Facebook. I suppose that means that these people have decided to make it their business feed rather than a personal feed, but what must their non-business friends think about all this business they are bringing. It doesn’t seem like there’s a way to block specific people who are notorious for their business-related posts.

As an aside, a few of my friends have been known to take those annoying Facebook quizzes too, so I’d love to block their feed as well! I don’t really care if they would be Don Corleone in the Godfather, if their iPod color is blue, or that Brad Pitt would play the story of their life if made into a movie.

Anyhow, the big question is where do you draw the line, and when you draw the line, do you go back and adjust your accounts to reflect this?

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t know if you need to draw the line — I know I enjoy reading blogs that share personal details once in the while mixed in with quality business-related posts.

    With how much time most of us spend domaining, I guess it’s understandable that most people are going to have both personal and professional contacts on their social networking accounts. I don’t use social networks much myself so maybe I shouldn’t be giving advice, however maybe it’s worth letting your domaining contacts know what your intent of the social networks are and how much business you’re comfortable with before it starts interfering with communication with your real life friends. I know I have too many people added on Twitter to talk to people individually, so if they want to reach me they can send me a direct message. Maybe I’m too old school – I still like using phone/email for business.

  2. I try and keep facebook personal unless i open up another account or something for business related stuff. i know for a fact that my personal friends could care less about what i do on the internet as far as twitter goes its all mashed up i think one personal friend has found me on twitter. My blog is about me and i happen to be a domainer so its business/personal

  3. I see you dilema. I started using facebook with friends from college, high school, and my home town. Then we started a group for one of our sites. Now I have competitors – who I know personally, advertisers, domainers….all types of people on my account

    I look at Facebook this way, it is a tool to aggregate and keep up to date on people you know personally or professionally, respect, and/or have an interest in common.

    You never know when a little nugget of information helps add value to your personal or professional life. I have learned to quickly scan my account and sort out the good stuff from the “I really don’t care” stuff.

  4. I just took care of the Facebook quiz issue recently. If you use Firefox you can find a few different plug-ins that take care of those. Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to block those damn tweets on Facebook. It’s becoming a plague.

    I like to keep Facebook to just friends, family, and close clients.

  5. There isn’t a line to draw IMO…so long as you don’t stray from the major theme of the blog, mixing in personal posts will actually endear you to your audience more.

    • @Todd

      I was more referring to seeing business-things in my Facebook feed, but I’ve found a way to hide posts from people who do it. Also, there are sometimes photos that people post that are intended for close friends rather than business associates.

  6. At 45 I guess I am too old for facebook or twitter.

    Both seem to be burning so bright that they just might have a short future. I see this social networking as a fad rather than a trend. A fad ends. A trend is the beginning of something big.

    Of course I could be wrong but sounds like these social networks are being abused and once they are tainted they will be tainted forever.

    I missed out on MySpace.com which was so 2008.

    All seem to be marketing for marketing’s sake which is fine but there will be some other “next big thing”.

  7. @Rob

    At 55 I’m not too old, but I have also faced this dilemma. I try to use Facebook more for personal stuff and a mix of family and friends. I’m playing with twitter for strictly business-related tweets in relation to one domain I’m developing, and I have a personal twitter account also.

  8. I don’t like facebook or any other of the social networking sites.

    Twitter is OK because it takes 2 secs to post an update and whatever.

    I still get “pressed” or more like harassed actually to get on facebook multiple times per day so that people can spam me, find out more about me and whatever… No thanks!

    I go online to do biz, nothing more, nothing less.

    Gotta draw the line with all this BS indeed.

    Even Stephen Douglas has sent me facebook requests to become buddies… LOL 🙂

    All this social networking stuff kills productivity big time because it is easy to get distracted and it can go on forever… I mean, who is to stop you? 😉

    Cheers,

    Mike

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