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Professional vs. Personal

a really common question. Every time I've talked about Facebook, this has come up. Should Facebook be a personal place or a professional place? Should my profile be personal or professional? Should have two profiles. How do I handle that? And I know this is kind of a lot to do in an audience poll, So I'm gonna ask you to do, you know, concise little answers, either personal, professional, both. Or, if you want to elaborate a little bit about why I'd love to have Jim read out some answers from the Internet audience. But anybody here in the room when I talk about whether they use it personally or professionally, how they separate that out, just start the discussion. Go ahead, JT. I know you have both a profile and a page. I do. I have both. Um, it's a little daunting to figure out. You know what can cross over and what can't especially like. I have a child, and I want my family to see you know, some of that. But I don't necessarily want other people seeing pictures of my kids are, you kn...

ow, just taking them for whatever reason. And so it's definitely a weird lines to kind of walk, especially in the photography industry. It seems like everybody would rather be friends with you then, like like you're Facebook page. So that's a little frustrating and kind of separating networking for marketing to right. I'm just bringing up because I've got these screenshots of your profile So you're using the same cover image but different profile photos on your personal and professional pages. How many? I don't wanna be rude here, but how many friends do you have in your profile like music? Just a few friends? Or is it observed? I think it's like 18,000, 2000 something like 200. That's I mean, that's probably beyond the people that you know and love personally. Yes, I have a connection with that. There's a funny number that, um oh, my husband. Although it if he's listening, maybe he can chime in. There is Ah, a number of about is the number that most humans can kind of keep in their head and relationships. And remember the details. Once you get beyond about 200 friends, you many of us have more contacts and that more colleagues than that more connections than that. Sometimes people come closer into our circle and then back out again, depending on work and life and where we move Teoh. But 200 is about almost. Humans can manage and remember how many kids you have and where we knew each other from, and things like that. Once you get beyond that, you kind of lose that. So you more than 200 people in your Facebook profile. It's not private personal anymore, anyway. Uh, Onda At that point, you have kind of a challenge. Do I have, ah, profile? That's personal, mostly public, and a page that public it's there's not a right answer, but I just want to acknowledge this is a question a lot of people have on Facebook. Um, I want to tell you to go start another profile that's private and just invite your friends. But I will show you in a moment that that is a violation of Facebook's policy. They don't think you should ever have more than one profile, so it puts us in a quandary. But let's see if anybody else has. You seem to have a page that you use publicly, but your, um, do you keep your profile more private? Or is that another place that's gotten out of hand and have more than just friends and family? It's pretty private. Yeah, So you would sing your profiles pretty private and your pages more public, and you've kept it that way from the start. Yeah, if you are just starting out and you have this option, this is a good strategy, right? To keep a very private or public. Um, but you're right. There's a level of engagement in profile that you don't get in pages that, especially if you're an author of Photographer. Your connections with your clients tend to be more personal. I use my profile in a very public way, and it gets a lot more engagement than the page. And I'm also guilty of not promoting that as much because the profile is where most of my engagement happens. I talked to you on the break about a photographer I really admire. Uh, Dana Cole. She actually uses the same photo for her Paige and her profile, and it's one of her photographer you, uh, one of her photographs rather than her own personal image. Um, and I thought that was really cool because then you always see a new image of hers, and it doesn't just get lost, like, you know, your newest work. And I've been thinking about trying to do something along those lines, so don't hate me, a feisty Latina, Um, but I really I think that was a really interesting strategy. But you also said, Did that just completely deter from the recognizability or if it's a long boat? So we got into an interesting discussion, and I'm glad you brought that back up, because I think this is useful for everybody who's paying attention. Here. You use a photograph of yourself in your personal profile, and then you're using a photograph that you took of somebody else on your page and my concern. When I first saw that this morning, Waas. If I only went to the page thinking of hiring you as a photographer, I might be confused thinking this was a photograph of you. And if I were later at an event trying to find you, that might make it harder for us to connect so again that recognizable issue. Now, if you know another photographer who is widely known for changing her profile regularly with photos of other people like she does it every day or every week and anybody who gets to know her nose. She has a different profile photo up there all the time. Then maybe she's found a way to make that her signature thing. Whether you're stealing that, are borrowing a good idea or isn't copying the highest form of flattery? You can work that out with her. You might give her head's up about why you think that's great and you want to share that practice. If that became your practice, then that might be OK. And there might even be something recognize, will you to Maybe you put a purple frame around everyone. I'm serious. Maybe there's something that distinguishes Hey, these air photos have taken of other people, but they're still a little bit of me here so that when you meet me, you have something to connect with me on purple hair is a very distinctive thing. I I think it's beautiful, but to not acknowledge that that's a big part of your recognizability in the world would be to miss an opportunity here, Um, so, yeah, I think anything can go in a profile photo, but you should have a thoughtful reason behind it and not just have it be random. And you might also test it out with people when you get a new client, if you ever have trouble finding somebody in an event that might be a clue that maybe that's not serving you as well. I shan't tell any thoughts on this, Sir. Um, I use my profile more privately than I do my page. I think, um, my thought process was that when people share my page, I wouldn't want people that I don't know seeing all of yeah, in my personal life, I guess which I mean, it's fine, but I mean, just to kind of separate work from home. Yeah, so I think that if there is a general bat, best practice for most people having a profile that's more personal and a page that's more business, it's definitely what Facebook recommends and what works for a lot of people. Um, then you get into people like me where my friends and family and work are so intertwined that my profile is all of those things, and it kind of works for me to have it be all of those things. But you, you know, you've got a photo of your niece here. Your sisters. This is clearly a very personal Thank you for agreeing to let me share this. So I think you're you've got something interesting going on with this page design. Um, you're using your logo. Is your profile image. You might want to think about putting your own photo in there somewhere. Like I could see a photograph of you may be peaking out over here again so that when I meet you somewhere, I have that recognizable connection. Yeah. Um, And if photography is one of your specialties, this has a lot of graphic design in it, but not as much imagery is there? Um well, I hadn't had it published for a long time, and I just published it really fast last night so that we could have Why? I'm putting you on the spot. Thank you for that. No, it's OK. Um, So originally, I think I did have, like, just pictures that I had taken, and I don't think I had anything of me. I know if you go to my site, then I have pictures of me on there, but it would make more sense if I had some kind of picture of myself. But I don't really like pictures of myself, which is you have to get over the, uh I feel I'm told. I just you know, I just It's hard. It's like to really, it's hard. Um, I I saw that by using multiple pictures of myself I don't have instead of for just one, I could combine a few of them together, and I just wanted to bring this up real quick to show before making sure we don't run out of time before the segments over. If I bump this up a little bit what I was saying If you go to try and change your profile image and you've designed something you want to put up there until you roll your cursor over that cover image, you won't see this button here to change the cover. What you find that it's pretty obvious if you're stumbling around like where do I change that cover photo? Just as soon as your role, your cover your cursor over it, you got it. Same here with the profile picture as soon as you roll your cursor over it, it's there. So it's really quite easy to change that and update that, but it will post to your time. So that issue of personal versus professional yeah, not a simple answer to that, Uh, but we'll talk to will talk to Aaron Manning a little more about that in the next segment, and we'll do some more about that. I'm gonna wrap up with just kind of a sequence that I hope is inspiring to people, which is about thinking about what does your profile design say about you and again that first impression. How do I make a good first impression? What is the message I want? So I want you to think about when somebody first opens up, whether it's your personal profile of your business page. Whatever you decide is the one you want to introduce yourself with. What's that first impression message that you want? And one last sort of caution? That may seem obvious to people, but sometimes isn't even with the best privacy settings on Facebook. Even with a limited number of people in your profile, it's still not really private. It's still not really private, not only because nothing on the Internet is private. It's not. But it's also not really private because, inadvertently, your friends may be sharing your work with their friends. And very quickly. You know that photo you put up of your daughter that's so beautiful and then they share it and they have 5000 friends that just went to 5000 plus people. Unless you tell the people in your very private Facebook page have a girlfriend who's really private about it. And I actually had a talk with her and I said, You know what? I will never share anything you post not because I don't love you, but because I have a lot of people in my profile that I don't know really well because I've met them briefly or they brought my books or whatever. Let us to connect. I don't want to violate your privacy that way. I'll like your things, but I want to warn you I'll never share them. And you might want to tell other people in your limited network not to share your work as well. Because I know, for example, your sister has a huge following and your soup. There are some things you can do to help restrict that a little bit. Of course, there's the privacy settings on. And if you don't know where those are, I think in the last session on the last day, I'm gonna spend a little time on privacy settings, making sure you go into all your profiles and set those. But in the top right corner, that little, uh um, icon that looks like a gear has settings and privacy and just poking through their If you haven't been and looked through the privacy settings on Facebook in the last six months or a year, they've all changed anyway. Go double check that you've got the right settings that you want up there. One of the few things I do is restrict. If somebody tags me in a photo or wants to post something on my wall, I like to see it first. That's a kind of a no brainer to me. Otherwise I'm pretty wide open to people. But if you're gonna post on my wall or put up a photo that you say is me, that I'm not sure is even me because a lot of time spammers post photos that aren't even you. I want to see it first. So that's my my simple tips. But let's just look at some, I hope, inspiring ideas before we go off to lunch. I want to give you some inspiration. So you could be thinking about Cole. Things do. So what does your profile say about you? Anybody know me? Moves Peterson. This is the one I told you years ago. I asked him for permission to use this. He has not changed it since then. You should know he's a photographer. He's a nature photographer. His name is Moose. I don't think he could get any better with this design. I don't think it's possible. And he hasn't updated in years. And he's got plus. He's doing fine. Sometimes you find something that just works that well. You can't mess with perfection, my friend. Can you think he likes scuba diving? Huge part of his life is the an executive meeting executive, Yes, but is he using his personal Facebook profile to tell his personal story? Have I featured his scuba dive photos? And many of my works love his work. She has a fashion consultant and fashion expert in Mexico. She has AH whole video program on terror networks, which is very popular site. There she is all about fashion on I look at that and right, I think, by this woman's got style, right? My husband really wanted to be a director, so all right, but he's also an author, so he's kind of got the books in the camera. So he's more the video guy. I'm where the Web girl, you know, that's cool. That says something about who is she organizes events. Doesn't that say, Wow, she packs him in right? And I love the way that line of people brings you right to her photo. Doesn't that tell me, Right? O if I'm thinking she is she a good event planner? While look at that crowd, she must be. He just moved to the other side of the world. We used to work together in Miami, so he's telling us that he now lives in a whole different place, and it's kind of fun. Teoh, Um, I think share your story. Switzerland. There we go. Try and remember what country that is. E think it's kind of fun to use those big images at the top of your Twitter and Facebook profile to tell something about who you are and where you are. And if you do something like, you know, move from one country to another using that profile toe, let everybody know right away. You know, I love I love Jordan a lot, but I hardly seen him in the last decade since we used to work together. As soon as I saw this, I was like, Wow, where did you go? It caught my attention. That looks playful and fun. Serena is actually a social media guru of herself and works at a very high level and marketing. And when she got hired for her new job, this is what she did with her cover photo. And it's kind of the press announcement and kind of cropped, and it kind of, you know, it's kind of an edgy, social media way to announce her job and social media. I thought, Well, that's that's walking your talk that's playing what you do. Paul Trani is an adobe, um, evangelist. That's the word that I use. He updated a recent. I think this photo's a little easier to see what he does, but you know, right away, like, oh, he gets in front of audiences and shows them how to use cool, creative suite tools. Great really speaks to who is really showcases right away what he does. And this is an image that would work very well on many different platforms and layouts and everything else. What do you think she does? You think I know where? Because we both have written a lot of dummies books. We're talking about stealing ideas. I have toe reach out to Marcia like Marcia. That's awesome. I have to do that, too. I have a whole shelf like that. We thought about how well that would work. At least you know, for a while that's one of the baby. When the new book comes out next month, I'll put it added to the shelf and use that as a way to promote it. No Google. Plus, she does something a little different. This is the same person noticed that her profile photos a little different, but she's pretty recognizable. It's not hard to tell. It's the same person, and here I think she's really playing up to her geek audience. Speaking itself by Southwest is great geek credit. If you know anything about the conference up by Southwest, you know anything about the tech industry, the fact that she was on stage, there is a claim to fame. If Google Plus is the place you promote yourself to your geeks, then that's probably a smart thing to do. They already know that she's written a 1,000,000 Dummies books. She doesn't need to reinforce that on Google, plus so thinking about using different designs on different pages. She's a stand up comedian. She also does a lot of consulting with National Public Radio, teaches people how to speak better. She's really but very playful, so she tends to do posts. This is one of her TV tea. I'll come back to what that is. Her mother in I love, she says. She was so pretty and smart and kind and laughed at almost all my jokes. She's gotta be funny. TV T What's that stand for anybody? No throwback Thursday. Good job, Chantelle and JD, both racing for that microphone throwback Thursday. So we'll talk some more about things you can post on ways to post. But once you start to know, some of the means. Every Thursday, people are posting photos from the past on Facebook that can begin, like What am I gonna post today? It's throwback Thursday. Perfect. So again, being consistent. So that's her on Facebook. That's around Twitter again, very recognizable. You really get the sense that she works with her voice and it's playful and she tends to post pretty funny things. Okay, heads up. Who doesn't want to buy the Clippers? If you haven't been following the news lately, the owner of the Clippers basketball team calendar a little controversy Many people have come out to offer to buy the team, So that's a mean. That's, you know, her being playful. And that's also finding that voice and that personality you go through just by saying again. And I know not everybody who watches this or photographers. I know that, you know, in a typical audience, I have photographers and people who make cupcakes and jewelry and all kinds of reasons that we use social media. But if you are somebody who works with images and you are creative, you have an incredible advantage. My friend Jasper to haul, whose work I've featured in many of my websites and teaching tools. You know, he's always got an awesome profile. Aaron Manning has countless images that she can put up in her profiles and ways to tell her story through her work. Colin Smith, who's also taught here, you know, very creative and not just his photos, but hiss photo illustrations. This is what his photo, his profile looks like this week. So great. If your photographer and you're not putting good images up there on a regular basis, you're definitely missing an opportunity. And then just to kind of come back to personal versus professional. My friend Anisa, whose photo I shall showed earlier. This is what her profile used to look like. Her son's a little taller than that now. This is what it looks like today, so some of us evolve from one to the other. Some of us start with Facebook is kind of this place. That's for family and friends, and then we realize actually, this is a place to promote myself as a teacher, as a speaker, as a professional, and it's okay to make that evolution. I think she's done a really brilliant job with this design of telling that story in a strong way. So personal or professional, Any thoughts on line is a lot others thoughts, Okay, lots of thoughts. So really, just a ton of people commenting that they that they have both and they're trying to figure out, you know, how do I How do I drive? My family and friends. I don't want to drive him crazy. So how often should I have that kind of interaction? Kind of back and forth. Let me throw one question to you, Um, from MPP s. How does Janine feel about putting your logo in this small image on our business pages instead of a personal? Yeah, and I think that works really well. Um, and in fact, with J. D. When we were talking about, should she use photos of somebody else? I think actually, a logo is preferable in general. Two photos of somebody else. Unless, like we said, if you're kind of known for doing that, lots of people use their logo on their page. I do the same thing. Although I had to alter my logo because you gotta make it square to fit in that space. It's kind of a drag, but yeah, I think that's a great way to handle the page. Vs profile conundrum. We're gonna talk a lot more about this with Aaron Manning and how she manages that. I'll talk some more about how I manage that, Like so many things will talk about today and tomorrow. There's no right answer. But I think being thoughtful, being aware that this is an issue and that the more you can kind of distinguish between personal and professional, probably the better you're using it. That said, some of the most successful social media strategies, including my own experience, is that I put a lot of professional things up there. I get a lot of good love for that. But everyone still wants those little personal, quirky things that I throw into the mix that get the greatest response. And I really think it's part of what makes us more authentic in social media to actually come out and do something personal. Once in a while, my husband gives me grief sometimes for being a little too serious and formal. You know, I'm so used to having an editor and an audience and all this stuff, and I've had the experience of getting places for a speaking engagement there. Like, Wow, you know, we saw your online profile, and you seem like all that. We didn't expect you to be so nice. I thought I gotta just that right. Like I gotta let out who I really am. So now I'm trying to be a little more authentic, a little more. Just let that in there. So I think some of us feel like we're supposed to be official in professional in our business setting. And that doesn't always serve us as well, especially if some of our work comes from or personal contacts. So, Jim, one more. Yeah. I want to read one more comment from Brian, who says I had to Facebook pages under different email addresses, business and personal. I found that I spent more time on my personal page and was having a hard time connecting to my clients on my business Facebook page. So I created a like page to try and bridge that gap. But I haven't seen a lot of positive growth from it because the pages have a lot of restrictions that personal pages have well, and that's another issue. And I'll talk about in the next segment, you can have a lot more interaction with people in a profile page. Then you can't in a profile on Facebook than you can in a page. And that's really intentionally designed in the world of Facebook to kind of cut down on the Spam and Freakley cause. They want you to advertise when you're doing stuff for business.