Loved Adam Arthur’s post just now about tools to manage social profiles, he suggests apps like ping.fm that have been very helpful and other new ones that I will have to try out.
But this led me to a related question: How do you manage what “profile” to take on for any given tool / purpose?
For example, I manage the GovPartner Twitter account, so I have to write as a company representative on there, often times sharing info on behalf of our clients, similar to a press release. So that’s very much a “work” profile where I also merge in messages from our staff and business partners. Then of course I have my own Twitter profile “Gabriela Dow” very much neglected, and then another account for local non-profit / fun work I do here in San Diego, classes we put together with friends (FriendsWClass). Hootsuite really helped to manage all three of these Twitter accts, sometimes a GovPartner message would be applicable to share via the other accounts.
Then there is Facebook… strictly a personal account, no “work friends” on there because I’m not sure clients need to know that I am working on their case study at midnight or see photos of my little guys running around at the beach…
And GovLoop ends up being a mix of “official” company info and some more of the personal insight….
But it ends up being a strange experience to sit down for the 20 minutes or so per day that I have to catch up on these sites… or throughout the day, I’ll make a serious corporate Twitter post, a funny comment on FB, try to add helpful info here, Tweet again about a Habitat fundraiser in SD for the weekend, another Tweet about an e-Gov project, upload a photo of my 2 yr old with pants falling down on the water feature at Legoland… back to answering an agency question via direct message on Twitter…
I do a lot of updating via my Blackberry while out and about and I swear I am going to end up accidentally posting a personal joke on the GovPartner site one day, or send my friends in Spain an e-Gov case study… que?
Anyone else feel like you’ve got the on / off personal / business switch to deal with and have gotten them mixed up?
i def. have that switch! my twitter is for multimedia & business stuff and my fb is personal (but still heavily sprinkled with multimedia and personal biz stuff). some of it i do have to put through a mental filter before i post (and as useful as it is, Ping.fm is making it a bit harder), but i’m getting used to it. lol – i do understand the multiple personality issues!
No kidding – in fact, I and some collaborators decided to coin a new word at one point, an “avonym“, as a representative, multi-purpose personal identifier reused across social media and other virtual contexts (when your “real” name simply wasn’t good enough)…
Love the term “avonym” – though I have to say that my professional postings are lightened up a bit and maybe more enjoyable given that I am also updating the personal sites as well 🙂