Keeping Personal And Business Accounts Separate

[Viktori]

I opted to use a separate account for my ebay store, and frankly, it has caused me to almost completely ignore them, since I have to log out and log in multiple times and update tweets and shares on separate accounts. I'm seriously considering just using my personal accounts for everything, but I don't want to seem unprofessional, although I think it might be acceptable with a small ebay store like mine.

Do you keep your promotion/business accounts separate from your personal ones? Do you find it easy to manage and update several social media accounts, and do you have tools to help you with it?

 

[Rube]

I don't see much harm in using a personal account, but it does depend on who follows you and what you have been posting there.

Most people on social media sites follow and are followed by people they do not know. People might find your business updates through a search box or hashtag, and you may not want them to see silly pics or jokes from your friends, so to be professional you do need to be careful about what else is on your social media account.

I never use social media accounts for personal use, only to promote my own content, but I do post links to other content that interests me, and that I think my followers might like. I also retweet or like what others post, generally when it is relevant to what I do online.

 

[SarahRTW]

If you can use all accounts equally, and not forget about or ignore one over the other, I think it's best to keep them separate. I have tried this and had way too many accounts, so use my personal accounts for everything. I am always careful about what I post, so that isn't an issue for me.

If you do use many accounts, an app like Hootsuite would definitely be a useful tool.

 

[Cammie27]

I maintain a business page that I manage from my personal Facebook account to promote my content apart from my personal interactions, but other than that I use a single account for most of my social media interactions. Other than FB I don't really share much personal information anyway and I'm not particularly active on any other social media sites except to promote my content.

 

[NicheGuy]

A conundrum indeed. I have 14 niche websites, 2 more in the hopper, a Google + page plus pages for each site niche, a Facebook page and pages for each site niche, plus a FB page under a pen name for my political blog, twitter accounts for each of my niches - I'm getting confused just writing this - and boards at Pinterest for each niche and I have a LinkedIn and StumbleUpon account.

UGH! So many sites, so many social media pages and boards - whatever - and so little time.

 

[Jodiann12]

Personally, I use tools like Hootsuite, dlvr.it, twitterfeed, and socialoomph.com to manage my social media sites. It makes life a lot easier for me when I do this. I also try not to put too many personal content, like videos or photos, on social media accounts, too.

 

[Trista]

I keep my personal and business social media accounts separate. I have a couple of niche blogs which each have a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page. I think for branding purposes it's preferable to maintain a separation of the accounts.

As others have mentioned there are some tools, such as Twitterfeed, that can help with updates on Twitter. With whatever social media sites you are on, it's worth checking out the various tools that can facilitate updates.

I do the Facebook fan page updates manually but even that is a quick process as I use the AddThis for Firefox.

 

[Mayvin]

I think you do have to be careful using your personal social media accounts for business. I think it depends on your past tweets and like someone said who is following you. If you're tweeting about how to market your website and then a few tweets before that you put out a tweet talking about what Kloe Kardashian just wore then it could seem unprofessional.

 

[atomic76]

I would keep them separate. Especially if you are working for an employer, or even in a situation where you may need to sell your business off to another party. There were some headlines a few years ago about a video blogger who worked for PhoneDog that got into a spat with his former employer because they felt that they owned his own personal Youtube account as well, which he had built up quite a following on.