How to mix work and private life on social media: tips for finding the right balance

The picture says: Don't forget to unfriend your boss when the weekend begins... Loesje

If you are a professional engaging in social media you need to find a balance between the sharing of private and professional information and bringing together or separating different networks; networks of friends and colleagues. Inherent in social media is that there is no clear separation between work and private life, because usually you have only one account on eg Facebook or Twitter. On that account you may be followed by friends and family on the one hand, but also by people from various professional networks. When you have a mix of people, what will you post? Pictures of the children? Professional articles? Or a mix? Personally, I don't have a dilemma on Twitter which I mainly use as a professional network about social and informal learning. On Facebook it is more tricky for me. I started on Facebook with mostly people from my international professional communities (eg Km4dev), but now there are more and more friends on Facebook. Do I hence share my vacation or share more about the content of my work? and I do post in Dutch, English or Spanish?. I end up sharing very little. I suspect that for many young people the dilemma will be reverse: they have a private network of friends on social media and beyond may later become active as a professional.

Different identities
As a basis, it is good to also look to see how you're separating - private- worklife in general in life. What are your different identities / caps you are wearing?. Everyone has their own different identities as family member, professional, friend, expert in ICT or enthusiastic music connoisseur, which identity in which you engage online? Do you know who you are and what you stand for? From my past experience working in international cooperation, I am quite used to a blurred boundary between private life and work. You know a lot of about your colleagues private lives in international developmen, from, for instance, driving 5 hours in the car together .... and in your free time you talk again about the work. Josien Kapma told me once that for farmers it is actually quite normal to integration private life and work, and that it is actually a separation which only began with the industrial revolution. If you are used not so strict separation will also be easier online more mixing. On a similar note a new job may bring about a new identity or new focus. That does require you to build a new network online. 

Separating different identities online 
If you clearly have different identities which are hard to mix and would like to separate them online, there are different options:

1. You can choose to have 2 different accounts. For instance, in primary schools is it often recommended to have a private account and a teacher's account. Eventually you may not want all your students to know about your parties. On the other hand, there is a Dutch professor Mooi who deliberately invites students to his facebook profile and also talks about concerts he has been too and other personal interests. Mooi: "I chose to present myself as a person and to see how students would react. I started posting inspiring images with captions, but soon I noticed that students were open to conversation." Another reason for separate accounts may be language, eg a Dutch and english twitter account. I mix Dutch and English tweets but are still struggling. 
2. Beside having different accounts you can use some features like lists on Twitter or Google + circles to distinguish networks via one account.  
3. You could also make a distinction in social networks used for private or professional engagement, such as Facebook for personal and Twitter for professional contacts. 

Here you will find 5 more tips to separate private and professional lives online. And here's also a blogpost with some figures on how people separate their professional and private lives.

Showing your unique professional perspective
Balancing between work and private life in social media is not just about your personal life and sharing your hamster or not but it is also about showing your personal color and unique views as a professional, your unique perspective. Do you share what you feel strongly about as a professional or do you neutrally retweet others without stating your opinion or view? I always try to give my opinion about things I share. I think it is also better for people to make a decision whether to click on something you share. See this tweet about a certain presentation of where I indicate slide 5 is funny.

Being honest and open versus thinking about your personal branding / clients/ people's feelings  What makes social media so compelling are the real stories, and those stories may be both personal and professional. Through social media people share their own stories, which give a different insight into somebody's life compared to eg. scientific articles. The question here is what you like to show. Recently I participated in the blogpraat chat where this was also a question: How can you blog about a sensitive situation at work without it being recognizable to colleagues? This is something I myself am also struggling with. On the one hand, because you do not want people to recognize themselves when the situation is sensitive. On the other hand, because you also want to create a certain professional image. While those 'war stories' about difficulties are often the most powerful stories. How open do you want to be? And it's even harder if you active on behalf of an organization. 

Balance between online and offline  
Furthermore, of course you also have to find a balance investing in online social media versus face-to-face contacts. When I am too much online I find it boring, when I am too busy I can't find the time to blog.. When you have to meet many deadlines it might be wise to put all social media off ... and yet keep some light engagement. You might need to meet and talk with new contacts on Twitter. Also here you need to find the right balance. 

NB. Input and inspiration for this blogpost gained during our 8 month course de leergang leren en veranderen met sociale media

Four strategies profesionals for personal branding via social media

Why would you be busy and thinking about personal branding?
I always though branding was a horrible word 'become your own brand'. It sounds so much like shallow marketing. In the meantime I changed. I started branding myself online, though not consciously, through this blog, participation in online communities, twitter, commenting on blogs. I have a lot of followers on Google+ even though I hardly post...So branding can also be about sharing you unique view on professional issues and showing what your view and particular interest is. This is actually fun to do. I am now convinced you can use social media very effectively and in a fun way to develop your professional identity. Seeing what type of blogposts trigger a response from you may help you define your own specific interests to pursue.

What is a professional? A professional is someone who work and has autonomy to act. He or she identifies with his field of work. A doctor in a hospital often identifies himself more easily with other medical doctors than with the hospital. As a result he of she will be more energized by a meeting with peer than by a hospital department meeting.

Online personal branding Social media provides a space for professionals to profile themselves as autonomous thinkers and professionals. Much more than for instance within the organisation. This sometimes gives friction if someone is more appreciated online than in the organisation. In social media they are judged for unique content and interesting views whereas in organisation hierarchy and organisational politics come into play. However, in social media there is also group dynamics, but it works differently.

Meet Emile I would like to share a great example of online branding. I was part of a meeting, the Yamtour. The meeting started online. During the gathering some speakers were features from large organisations like Rijkswaterstaat en Capgemini.
They had interesting stories, so my point is not that the selection process was not good, but often the larger organisations are in the spotlight. Small innovators like Emile buurtzorg will not be selected so easily to be on stage. However, Emile used the online space to profile himself succesfully online as an innovator in the health sector. He used the online space to search other health professionals and started a group for them. After the event, he organised an informal meet up.  This is an example of using online space to profile yourself. 

Four strategies to use for personal branding using social media

1. Become an 'info-mediairy' or 'content curator' if you want. Scan information, search, make sense of it and add your personal view. You can use Google like everybody else, but you need to build your unique learning network to get more interesting information. You can use RSS feeds and other dashboard tools like tweetdeck or hootsuite to help you scan information. Don't forget the sharing part!
2. Network and learn. The speed of communication through social media and the open culture lends itself for building a personal learning network, a group of people who can help you answer work related questions. As they say: 'it's no longer what you know but who you know'. My tip is to invest in developing some relationships further. Not allow your network to become very shallow. Try to meet new people too.
3. Share. Menno Lanting -in his Dutch book 'Iedereen CEO'- notes that sharing through social media is an excellent way to work on and develop a professional identity. What are the things you'd like to tweet? What triggers you to write a blog. Maybe your blog categories help you to sharpen your elevator pitch. Everybody is an expert on something on social media...
4. Collaborate in project. Maybe you are a very practical person and you'd prefer to let your actions speak. You could also use social media to work on real project and collaborate. For instance help build a wiki about a specific topic.

The four strategies are overlapping ofcourse. Nevertheless, I'm convinced they can help you make informed choices on where to start or what kind of activities to intensify. Choose the strategy closest to your preferences and current activities.

I developed a presentation on Prezi on this topic. You might have a look if you are interested. It is in Dutch, but quite visual so it might make sense. 

Professionele Profilering on Prezi

Our book "en nu online" is born

My first book ever is out, written with Sibrenne Wagenaar (see picture). I even had a dream last night of a smooth delivery (of a baby). Probably because the publisher told us the book was born on November 29th at 15.00 pm. and we continued using this analogy. If you speak Dutch and you are interested you may order it here or here or buy the e-book Or follow En_nu_online on Twitter for your daily tip about learning through social media. For all others, it is a good reason to learn Dutch! You see how easy it is, you can probably guess what 'en nu online' means... The book is about using social media for learning as a professional (part 1), in an organisation (part 2) and as facilitator of learning processes (part 3).

I just received my additional 8 copies and read a sentence that I like myself (sometimes I am totally embarrassed too). "The way and speed with which social media will be embraced depends on the organisational culture and the common ideas about learning" Then somehow it is logical that the social-constructivists and people focussed on informal learning processes are the first to embrace it. Others probably don't as easily see the value of social media.

It is funny to go back to our original set up in 2008. We were aiming for 50 pages (has become 290!) and sharing our own enthousiasme about web2.0 tools with people we met and who would say things like:

“If I Google something and find a blog I skip the result" “Does everything have to go even faster than it already does?”

It took us 2 years to write, and several versions (3-4) of each chapter. It took me 280 hours in total. It was fun to write it together. As I heard Nancy White say somewhere: if you write a book together you either become friends or hate eachother in the end. (can't find where!). In our case, we really got to know each other and value the expertise and view of the other person. Hence we celebrated well...

Online professionalization (by professionals ofcourse)

Last week I gave two workshops 'online professionlisation' for the learninglane, a yearly three days event in the Netherlands. (together with Josien who replaced Sibrenne). It was a good opportunity to test a new theory. We have done a lot of webwork workshops where we teach professionals social media tools. The focus is thus on the tools even though having a goal to work with the tools helps to see the link and persevere. Therefore this workshop was organized around five strategies:

* Cooperation/collaboration
* Personal Branding
* Online conversations with peer professionals
* Networking
* Information processing and scanning

Although the strategies are intertwined (if you're blogging with colleagues to get input and exchange ideas, it can also work as personal branding), they can help you to gain focus. They can help to find a good entry point and may help you decide where to insert your/more energy.

I started linking professionalisation to informal learning and autonomous knowledge workers in my presentation with prezi. Here is the video I showed about motivation of professionals (Autonomy, drive, purpose). This is the real basis which explains why social media are important for professionals who are autonomous learner and eager to master an area or craft.

Reflecting on how it went: what struck me is that for quite some participants the thinking in strategies seemed to work out well, yet others are still in need of getting to know a number of tools, were very simple questions like 'how can I send a message to someone on twitter and others see it too?. Without this basic idea of the tools, talking about strategy seemed difficult for them. Probably there are differences in the entry points which help people to develop an online professionalisation practice, depending on preferred styles. Apart from focus and skills, participants suggested that you need enough guts to try out a new medium like for instance twitter.

I'd like to share a very nice example was shared in the group: In an organization the Director thought that employee participation should not only be shaped through the official organs like the 'medezeggenschapsraad', a sort of workers council. He has set Friday as the twitter day for his organisation. Staff from all levels of the organisation are invited to share direct questions and opinions via twitter. He is really available to respond. A good example of how social media can be deployed within your organization to stimulate new types of interactions and collaborations (I wonder now whether these tweets are public or private but forgot to ask..).