Personal Versus Professional

With the web making life vastly easier to network and come in contact with various people all over the world, you have to think about the presence that you are supplying viewers. Are you an exciting, energetic person who loves to have fun and run wild? Or are you a serious, down to business nut who values structure and order?

Your blog, site, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or any other networking site will reflect who you are, but this isn’t always a good thing. It’s always a good idea to separate business from pleasure, and the same goes for your web presence.

One of the ways that you can keep your Friday night personal is to have different accounts for the different parts of your life. Famous writers have Facebook and MySpace pages dedicated to their writing so that readers can become fans. They use these usernames for anyone who might know them, but they themselves do not know the person in question. When you have a separate account on social networking sites for your personal life, you will limit the access the world has to your indiscretions. You can do the same thing for Twitter and only allow people you know to gain access to the photos of one too many margaritas.

When it comes to blogging and your site, or the site that you work for, it’s important to clarify your goals. Are you writing because you want to or because you’re getting paid and someone expects you do do something a certain way by a certain time?

If you’re writing because you want to write, then you can write whatever you want right? Wrong. Even though you may have a fun site with a silly blog that talks about weird nonsensical ideas, that doesn’t mean that you should divulge important information about yourself. Sure, let your readers know who you are, let them see the fun side, but know the boundaries. Know when you’re going too far when expressing yourself because one wrong post can send you to blogging purgatory. Just kidding. But if you say something that you shouldn’t have said, and the wrong person finds out, your site and blog will suffer.

If you’re writing for a site or keeping a blog because someone is paying you for it, then don’t talk about the best sandwich in the world and why unless that’s what you’re supposed to be writing about. You need to think about this: is your opinion really important? Does it matter what YOU think, or does your boss just want you to write something and keep you quiet about everything else? Most of the time when we write for people, we need to be very professional. This doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun writing, blogging, or commenting on the web, it just means that there is a time and a place for everything and with the digital age, many of us have forgotten about this.

To be on the safe side so your boss doesn’t see that photo of you drinking out of the toilet, separate your business web presence and personal web presence.

Written by Patricia Vennes from Writer's Rants
Posted on August 24th, 2009 and filed under Around The Blogosphere
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