Take Care What You Share

There are many ways to use Social Media. Since my professional life is primarily online, my day to day use of social media and the folks I tend to pal around with via social media channels focus mostly on professional pursuits. I am immersed in writing, via other writers, businesses who depend on writers, vendors for various services writers need, and generally anything to do with either the business or personal side of writing for a living all day, every day.

You could say that I eat, sleep, breath, and socialize my profession.

The Intersection of Personal and Professional

However, many of my friends and family also use social media to stay connected. My parents are blogging their month-long adventure across the historic Rt 66. My sister keeps up with old high school friends via Facebook and blogs about her horse sculptures via her blog. My boys play games and touch base with their friends. My oldest daughter tweets and posts to Facebook to keep all of her family and extended family updated on my youngest granddaughter.

You could say social media helps our family, spread across multiple states and thousands of miles, stay in touch and up to date.

It’s not uncommon for my personal and professional lives to bleed together, especially on Facebook where I seem to be connected with everyone I know on both sides of the line. You might find a personal note in between sharing blog posts about writing. You might find pictures of my vacation next to pictures of my office remodel project.

I’ve thought about separating the two, but that really just creates more work for me in terms of online identities to maintain. To be honest, I just don’t have that much spare time.

So instead, I try to temper what I do online so that it’s not too much work stuff to bore friends and family, but not too much personal stuff to look unprofessional to colleagues and business contacts.

I hope I do a decent job. Some, however, don’t seem to understand the difference.

You’re Running Up My Phone Bill

Yesterday I got a friend request on Facebook from another professional in the writing world. I didn’t know them, but that’s not uncommon. I’ll bet any one of us has at least a dozen “friends” on Facebook we couldn’t even begin to tell you how we know, met, or became “friends” with, if not more.

Naturally, I always look at a person’s page before I accept any friend request. I want to make sure they’re a real person, with a real account, and we have something in common. As I was going down this person’s page, I noticed other “friends” and some of the likes and websites showing on this person’s wall. At first glance, I started thinking “cool, another professional writer.” As I read more, I was happy to have found (or have them find me) another working, real writer.

That is, until I scrolled down a little further and saw a few of those “I just won a Pig in a Blanket on State Fair Mafia Farm Wars. Will you help me feed him/poke him/sell him/raise him/slice him up for bacon?” badges from whatever game or other the person played in their spare time.

Credibility takes a drastic nose dive.

I hate those game update things on Facebook. I really do. I have  every one of them blocked from showing in my news feed. They drive me crazy. As a professional, I see those as a mark of the amateur, unemployed, have-nothing-better-to-do writer/professional wannabe.

Having been raised in a time when “long distance” was paid per minute, so a relative calling from out of state garnered instant respect in terms of not interrupting my mother while she was on one of those calls, these badges and game updates bring about a similar thought. I instantly hear my mother’s voice reminding me “we don’t want to run up the phone bill, dear.” They waste time and space that could have been put to better use, or at least not done any damage to your professional image. It’s a lot like leaving a long distance caller on hold while you go change a diaper or deal with kiddie disruptions. Those updates are just blank space running up the caller’s phone bill for no good reason.

Appearances are Everything Online

Now this writing professional may very well be one of the best writers in the world. They may have only played the game once or twice just to see what all the hoopla was about. There were, after all, only a few of those badges compared to other people’s walls which are covered in nothing but game updates. However, even just those couple of instances were enough to dip credibility in my eyes, without my even thinking about it. As soon as I saw them I thought, “another writer who isn’t really serious about the profession” even though that might not be the case at all.

Just something to think about as we go about our social media lives this week. Take care what you share and how it might appear, especially if your personal and professional lives tend to touch sides anywhere in your online social networking activities. Take care what you share and don’t go running up your follower’s phone bills unnecessarily.

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