Balancing your work and personal life on social networking tools such as Facebook has become more complex than ever — and the dangers go beyond the well-publicized examples of posting party pictures to your profile.
Kirsten Dixson, a reputation management and online identity expert, has some tips to keep you on the appropriate social networking etiquette path. Because Facebook mixes your personal and professional life, she says it requires more careful attention than LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, which keeps a strictly all-business look and feel due to its design.
Here are Dixson’s suggestions for managing your Facebook profile and your overall social networking persona, and warnings about places where you can get into trouble with people who matter to you personally and professionally.
1. Choosing your profile picture
Thoughtful: Some people militantly believe that Facebook is all personal while LinkedIn is all professional. If this sounds like you, you might choose a Facebook pic of yourself fishing, hanging out at a party or playing a guitar. But Dixson says you’re better off to err on the side of caution here, by keeping your profile picture professional, or at least neutral. Your photo doesn’t need to be in a studio with a boring canvas backdrop – it could be outside on your deck or on a mountain side, for instance – but it has to be fairly even-keeled. (This is different than LinkedIn, where photos should be strictly professional, Dixson says).
Thoughtless: According to Dixson, don’t post profile pictures that are “too sexy, cartoonish or that might alienate your audience.” A look through your friend list can usually reveal the ones she’s talking about. The stylized glamour shot, the quick snapshot of slicked up hair or low-cut dresses taken right before heading to a party, or worse, costume-like pics: wet suits and surfboards, bike gear, Halloween outfits -the list goes on.
Rina Valan, President and Founder of Fantasia Home Parties
