I think it’s a really difficult line to play. When it comes to building a personal brand, I think it’s important to show personality and some of your interests in addition to the professional aspect of your life. To me, it makes someone more approachable and potentially on a common ground.

Like anything, I suppose it’s a careful balance.

I definitely agree with you on the complaining tweets, though – it’s unlikely I’ll do business with anyone that indicates they don’t like what they do.

The difference between coming across as dull and lacking in personality and a bit of a jerk is very fine. I personally would prefer to hire someone who shows a bit of their real self on social media sites, rather than just purely business-orientated tweets.

That said, it’s not appropriate to moan, complain, etc.

I thought long and hard about having a company profile and a personal profile on Twitter but in the end decided to go with just the one as I don’t have a lot of time. I also decided on this because people are hiring “me” the person and not just me the business.

Thus far things have worked out okay but I do try and monitor this because each tweet changes people’s perception of you.

It’s a tough issue and one that we’re going to know more about as (if) social media grows.

Very good advice; I believe that if you wouldn’t want your boss. clients or your Mum to see it then don’t write it!

Everything you write online can be seen by potential employers or clients – A friend of mine works for the government & says she is shocked at the information & photos people post on their Facebook accounts; not only could it be a security risk, but it doesn’t show them in a very good light to their employers.

Another case in point is the story of this woman who got rumbled in court – http://twurl.nl/wt2le3 (although disgracefully, the UK legal system is such that she still won!)

Your post may me all paranoid, so I went back over my Tweets for the past week. I can honestly say that 98% of them were business or industry focused. Whew.

But that said, I don’t quite agree. I’m with you about the annoying bitching and moaning, but I do want to know that the people I work with have a personality and are not “all work and no play.” I think this culture of working yourself to death and talking all business, all the time is dying out (in the corporate world and for freelancers). And that’s a good thing.

Just because we’re freelancers doesn’t mean we are so desperate that we need to take every job that comes along. Sometimes I show my sense of humor or compassion for a cause on Twitter, my blog, my Facebook, etc. If someone gets offended because they don’t support a pet food bank or if they have such a lacking sense of humor that they don’t understand a wisecrack, then chances are we wouldn’t be a good professional match. We’ve used Twitter to weed each other out and can now move along.

While I agree that a certain amount of professionalism must be maintained on social networking sites, if a potential client judges me for my addiction to coffee or my tweets about it, then the a collaboration between us probably wouldn’t work very well anyway.
I believe that a professional can mix the personal and business as long as they exercise a bit of common sense. Complaining about your work on a social network should obviously be something you refrain from, but complaining about your teenager really shouldn’t reflect badly on your ability to provide quality services. And it just may form a bond between you and a potential client dealing with the same thing.

I’m afraid I disagree! It’s not a new debate, of course, and it’s the reason that so many end up having multiple Twitter (and other) accounts. For separating business and personal life. But it’s not that simple. Business revolves around trust. And trust involves non-business characteristics (read: personal). Hiding your personal life from a potential customer, allowing only for the business facts to be exposed, is NOT going to increase your chances of success.

Jeremiah Owyang also recently reflected upon how much of his personal live he should share: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/04/20/how-much-should-i-share, and I wrote about this same issue here: http://twitwall.com/view/?what=020E070F04. Opinions remain divided…

@cdn

I can agree that you should avoid tweeting something that suggests that you’re a bad worker (like “Only 4 hours of work left”, “I’m really unproductive today”, “Can’t focus”, etc).

What I don’t agree with, though, is that talking about about daughters, your exercise habits, home improvement, your opinions on world issues (but be careful), and the weather does anything other than make you appear human and three-dimensional.

I don’t really agree. For me and most people Twitter is used as a personal look into the life of the professional. Is a tweet like ‘Waiting in a very long line to get on the train.’ really going to influence your decision of hiring a freelancer? It is important to chose your tweets wisely, but at the same time it is a really nice balance to see someone you may potentially hire in both a professional and a personal light. I think it makes business a little more comforting. Even is someone did post something useless like ‘eating a peanut butter sandwich.’ that means nothing to me. It took them 5seconds out of their life to write that and it doesn’t mean anything more or anything less than that. Usually the make or break it for any employer is the employees personality. You have the skills, but what is your personality like? And that is why using twitter on a person level works in my book.

If I’ve got a personal twitter and a business twitter and on my personal twitter you find things like “had a steak sandwhich for lunch” and that’s not what you want to read, that’s your own fault for looking for it. As long as I don’t write about how much I can’t stand my clients or anything like that, I can’t see censoring myself on my personal twitter account/blog/facebook/whatever. If you don’t want to read what I had for lunch or that I might be going sky diving this weekend, read my business twitter/blog/facebook/whatever. I’m a person. I spend 50-60 hours a week working and 10 hours a week on school, outside of that, I’ll do what I please.

http://xkcd.com/137/

I agree with a lot of the points in this article about being conscious of what you are putting out there. However, I am getting tired of all these posts telling me I shouldn’t get personal on my social media pages. A potential employer has already seen my resume. As a recruiter I would be cautious of any twitter or facebook page that was purely business. Does this person have no balance? Is this all for show to get a job? Social media is just that, social. Just don’t be stupid.

If you want to hire a robot, that’s your prerogative, but employees are people. To suggest that their personal media sites should be entirely business focused is absurd. You’re asking your employees (and worse, freelancers) to become your business 24/7. Unless you’re paying them for 168 hours a week, you really don’t have any right to make that demand.

I absolutely agree with having and needing a filter, but at the end of the day, we’re all human beings, and that needs to be understood. Your business is a brand, and any employee should respect that and have the common sense not to whine about you, it or the work they do for you (if it’s such a problem, quit), but asking people to stop being themselves and become an impersonal automaton with your logo stamped on their forehead is absurd.

If you want your employees to be using social media to get your brand out there, you’ll quickly discover that most people find corporate tweets to be pretty boring – unless they’ve got a dash of personality to go along with them. Don’t force your people to abandon themselves, or encourage everyone to abandon their humanity. That’s the problem with our business culture, not the solution.

I like to keep my tweets a mix of pro and personal, but in the end they’re my tweets and I will not self-censor.
If a client hires me he hires ME and not some public persona I want to project on Twitter.

Disagree with most of what’s said here. What’s wrong with saying what you’re ‘actually’ doing. Isn’t that the whole point of social media? If people just posted about specific work stuff to enhance their profile how boring would that be? If I’m working with someone I’d like to know about them as a person and a load of self promotion doesn’t communicate this. Frankly I just wouldn’t read it as it’s dull!

I agree that posts about being drunk as well as other topics such as sex/religion/politics/drugs should be left alone but on the whole, lighten up! I’m a freelance web designer, not someone striving for a career in politics or the clergy.

I’m not a big fan of Twitter–it seems to be mostly either a combination of mundane chit-chat or sixth-rate Oscar Wilde wannabes. However, I’ve heard it described as a personal conversation: if you’re reading an uninteresting tweet about the tastiness of someone’s bagel, it’s like listening in on someone’s conversation on the subway–while a public place, it’s someone *else’s* conversation, and it’s not really directed at you. I wouldn’t want to judge someone for a 140-character post that wasn’t meant for my eyes.

I’m also more than a little hesitant about the value of the great business emigration to Twitter. How much professionalism & wisdom can you put in a 140-character post? It’s like trying to manage a business relationship via SMS.

“Que sais-je?”, as Montaigne said. I certainly prefer getting a feel for someone’s personality–whether through their tweets or blog posts. Does our use of every outward-looking tool have to turn us into robotic actalike-soundalike-lookalikes?

The way I look at it, as much as I agree with you, I have to disagree with some aspects. It is a “social networking” site so it almost defeats the purpose if we can’t be social sharing about ourselves to others in the network. I 100% agree that we shouldn’t post about how annoying a client is, or a friend, or a girlfriend or anything for that matter but we should post business-related tweets, a few good helpful links here and there and a bit about yourself outside of the business world. I personally would be going to a social networking site to find out about the person’s personality, the resume tells me about their professionalism but the social networking tells me who they really are.

But the one point you made is very good, if they’re complaining about things in their tweets then that tells me who they really are…not an employee of mine.

I disagree with this idea. I am a strong believer that your personality is a huge reason why most clients employ freelancers. If you are nothing but a corporate face on twitter, not only will no one want to follow you but the people who do will gain no idea about you as a person.

I don’t think any client who decides on who to employ from a quick look on twitter is a good one to work with (although I doubt there are many out there)

I can understand that moaning about work related issues can be destructive but I love my job and I know how lucky I am and have never felt the need to be negative.

The day when twitter becomes too serious is the day I look to find the next trend in networking.

I agree with Dan. The whole point of social media is that it IS social. Most people I have spoken with about social media also say they like the mix of the personal and professional, as long as there is a balance. I think this feeling is stronger among younger people in hiring positions, who are really leading the social media charge.

Twitter has more of a professional/personal merge than Facebook or LinkedIn, which have stronger boundaries. I keep my Facebook page strictly personal and my LinkedIn professional. On LinkedIn, I don’t want to read that someone is making a pot roast. On Twitter, I don’t mind that, as long as that Tweet is interspersed with more professional tweets.

I agree that complaining about your job or telling people that you are drunk is inappropriate in a public setting. But waiting for a train or the stress of teenage daughters? That makes people human, and I think these tweets add another dimension to what could be a sterile online presence.

I agree with the other commenters. Have you tried keeping multiple separate Twitter accounts? It takes a lot of time and energy. And this is 2009; I don’t think my clients need the delusion that I sit in a cubicle all day and never drink coffee or take a walk.

I’d rather take the risk of someone finding me unfunny and being turned off to working with me, if the reward is even a few cool projects with cool people who get me.

I think your post provoked a good discussion – made folks think – always a good thing. I kind of come down on the side of personal observations and activities going in a personal post (I use Facebook for that) and comments that reflect on me as a writing professional on my “business” sites – Twitter and Alternating Currents blog posts. However, I make personal observations relevant to freelance writing experiences on Twitter and I enjoy/appreciate similar comments from fellow writers.

This was a really excellent post, with some great insights. I try my hardest to make sure everything that I tweet design related, I might occasionally say that something personal… but I don’t think that I ever really cross that fine line.

I haven’t even really begun to use Twitter for ‘professional’ reasons yet, but even if I do it will be promoting myself as a personal brand (for now)… so having a few personal comments every once in awhile may not be the worst thing. Don’t say anything that you don’t want the whole world to know, especially if you are business interests in Twitter.

I think all of the people who have commented on here and I are in the same boat. I appreciate this post a lot, however, I had a difficult time grasping that these tweets were an area for concern:

· “Just ran 5 miles at the regional park. Beutiful [sic] evening”
· “Sipping on some coffee”
· “its nice and warm here today”
· “Waiting in a very long line to get on the train”
· “Lunching with Joe”
· “Time to change oil on car…”
· “I feel like chicken tonight!”
· “OMG are teenage daughters meant to be this much stress?”
· “Making a pot roast”
· “Mel Gibson’s wife files for divorce”
· “only another 4 hours of work”

I only run one Twitter account and fully understand that anything I say goes out to the public and can never be retracted. Sure, some things I say can come across as silly or senseless, but that’s what makes me human. I consider myself to be a professional person in my line of work both at my job and with my freelance business. I use common sense in that I don’t talk smack about anything I wouldn’t want coming to haunt me later. I do have a life outside of my jobs, and if that’s difficult for a client to understand, then it would probably be best to not work together, which is okay. There are more fish in the sea.

I certainly believe that people should always be professional … online and offline. Everyone should ‘mind their manners’ when networking socially or professionally. This goes without saying.

Having said that, people should be themselves. If you ate a ham sandwich for lunch and you want to share that with the world, I say go for it. If you’re looking forward to completing your work day, that indicates (to me) that you have work-life balance and keep standard business hours. If you just finished running 5 miles, this tells me you maintain a healthy lifestyle. I can’t imagine why a prospect would be turned off by people disclosing small details about their day. Freelancers are not robots.

If you’re using social media to communicate ‘business only’ ideas, you’re in a sea of millions communicating those same ideas. Your persona is what makes YOU unique. And hopefully it attracts like-minded clients.

I agree with you…but it’s important for people to understand that it is okay to show your personality in your business tweets. People don’t always want to work with corporate-brained robots. While you should keep a positive attitude in your tweets about work–you shouldn’t be afraid to be sweet, snarky, funny or boundary challenging if that is the corporate image you want to project. Also, as an aside–you can delete tweets that don’t show what a positive professional you are.

While Twitter does provide some basic, if interesting, prospects for psycho-analyzing people, at the moment I don’t feel it ought to be a tool to judge one’s professional capabilities.

Yes, you can probably get an inkling about a young hire’s attitude if their Twitter and blog have nothing but ‘OMG’ comments about parties. But chances are their resumes will also give away vital clues to their personality (like a sloppy cover letter, lack of references, etc).

I do agree you should watch yourself online, particularly if you are marketing yourself as a brand. I do that for myself. Though as some people have pointed out, Twitter in particular seems to attract followers who are more interested in knowing about the ‘real’ you, and almost expect you to post mundane things like ‘I like really like this coffee place’.

On a side note, if I was to hire someone, I think I would like to meet them in person if possible (and certainly if they were to be working in my office). People can be rather ignorant about how social media works, and might not even realize that anyone can just read their frustrated rants on the net. They may still do a great job. And I think you can learn a great deal more from meeting a person than combing through their Twitter and MySpace profiles for clues.

Thanks for all the reactions, and naturally, everyone has to make their own decisions about what is appropriate to post, and where.

Just wanted to say that I wasn’t suggesting that you take all the personality out of your posts. For example, the passion you exhibit for your craft, your excitement over producing a great outcome, show an important part of your personality. And a bit of humor is very welcome. I’m not suggesting you be dry or dull.

I’m just saying that some conscious decisions about where you draw that line need to be made. Too many people have jumped in without thinking about their audiences. Several have suggested that being social is the whole point of social media. That simply means that you have to decide where “being social” fits in your business/marketing strategy. The real point is not what the inventors of these sites intended, or how others use them, but how you intend to use them.

I’m not so much intrested in telling you where these media fit in your plan as I am in nudging people to explicitly think about it, instead of just doing what so many others are doing. It’s a little like being invited to the annual office party by one of your big corporate clients. It’s a social setting, but while you’re there, you’ll still be judged as a vendor. You can be a little looser at that office party than you can in a committee meeting during work hours. But you should decide before you go to the party whether dancing on a desktop with a lampshade over your head is acceptable in your relationship with that client.

No hard and fast rules, then, except to deliberately think about how you use these media[

I like how people seem to think that they can get a good feel for a potential employee by checking their Twitter/Facebook/etc. What Ben Franklin said still holds true, but here’s a different spin on it: what I write on my Twitter and other personal sites has no bearing on how good or bad an employee I’m going to be, and I don’t believe that it would for other people. That I’m bored at work doesn’t mean I’m not working hard as a good employee ought to be and that I’m fascinated with Mel Gibson has no bearing on my work ethic either.

Judging someone’s personal demeanor in order to find out what their professional demeanor is like is sort of like coming into someone’s house to look around at how organized they are to see if they can maintain an organized office space. The two are not interchangeable, contrary to popular belief.

If a professional front is what you’re looking for, stick with looking at their professional output, not their personal ones. Regardless of whether you hold down a corporate job or freelance, you’re professional demeanor is almost ALWAYS a mask over your personal one. Why do we think it would be any different in an online setting?

Will, you were searching for a Virtual Assistant for crying out loud. How mundane and dull would would work-centric tweets be:

“making four copies to send to Will”
“invoicing Will’s clients!”
“here’s a great tutorial on alphabetizing contacts”
“Top 5 reasons I use Basecamp”…

Fundamentally your post has merit–don’t post mean, snarky, or NSFW links–but your examples don’t indicate that at all.

I agree that freelancers need to think seriously about what they’re writing on Twitter. Random, offensive tweets or those that paint the Twitter user in a negative light should be avoided at all costs.

At the same time, I see the value in posting some personal content on my Twitter feed, even though I use it for professional reasons too. If I’m going for a run or bike ride or practicing yoga, I’ll tweet about it because those are interest areas of mine and also topics I’d love to write about. The same applies with cooking—I regularly blog about food on my personal blog, so for me sharing a link to a recipe I tried last night is a natural extension of that.

It’s a fine line though, because I know I have “judged” people in the past based on what I see on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. So I have to imagine others will do that about me too.

A company that won’t hire me because I tweeted about the weather is a company I don’t want anything to do with.

I agree with what most people on here have commented – that it IS fine balance, but a small taste of your personality is OK. I do definitely censor myself on Twitter. My page is intentionally branded in the same vein as our website to remind myself that I am only sharing the same sorts of things that I would share with my coworkers and clients.

Not to mention, we all follow each other, as yet another safeguard to what we are posting. No one is editing what we tweet, but it does keep professionalism there knowing for a FACT that your boss is following you.

And I agree about the negative comments. Didn’t we learn anything from the Cisco candidate incident?

I agree that some spice is needed in whatever you put out through internet, just as in design, face to face business conversations, and pretty much anything you do. I also think that there is a point being made when the writer of this article spoke out from his own experience while hiring. Most of the comments are made by freelancers, not contractors. Of course it is easiest to “just write”, and let out all that we would be inclined to write about. However I think the point of this post is to learn to reconsider what is being said, as well as what is not being said… much like you would when designing an advertisement, when talking with a prospective client, or when going out in public. In all of these situations I strife to be my own person, but I know that if I let too much shine through it might me overwhelming and even ruin a deal. After all, if most of what I say through clothes, words or image, comes off as “I kinda work but generally I like talking about random issues in my life” I would not expect not be hired. I think that social media for people hunting for a job, or for gigs, does differ from social media for students, people with a stable job, basically people whose business doesn’t depend on their online persona.

The bottom line for me is that social media becomes as important as a business card, a blog, a website, a c.v., with a twist… if that is what you’re aiming for. If you just want to use it as socializing social media, then that’s also fine.

I don’t think being professional and showing personality are mutually exclusive options. Being able to show a bit of what’s behind the professionalism mask is great, and I’ve had clients who later told me they decided to go with me over someone else because I seemed friendlier on Twitter (yay!).

That being said, if you ARE planning on Tweeting and Facebooking, use common sense, because as the article says people can and will find you and will judge you, whether its fair or not. Each and every site you moderate, including social networking profiles, are part of your online personal brand, and that brand can elevate or kill your career, depending on how well you tend to it.

I actually wrote an eBook on the topic of personal branding that covers your online reputation in greater depth. You can get it free here, if you’re interested.

Twitter reminds me of the early orkut days… everybody’s scrap book was an open affair and there was a lot of peeping and following conversations around… Twitter is a novelty because of its openness and transparency thanks to the numerous tools that you have now. SO its best to identify what your twitter account is about. If it is targeted towards the business end then one sure needs to be careful and strategic in their tweets. Regarding the people who take it as an open journal, well it is up to them. After all it is a free world.

Regards,
@writeawriting

Personally, I know managers think they’re really brilliant by weeding people out via twitter and facebook, but really, I think that tactic is really just totally arbitrary and damaging. Hiring is still a crap-shoot; just because crisp, prim and proper Robert didn’t post about how much he hates fellow drivers doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a family at home, stuffed into his freezer. ZERO payoff here.

One of the trends of 2009 (and predicted for forward years as well) is transparency. Twitter has similar venues geared towards business but twitter it’s self has no such bounds, it’s a melting pot full of everything. In my opinion as a business owner, i’d prefer to see these personal tweets than to have everybody censor themselves even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the industry.

There is alot you can tell about people by what they talk about, are interested in, rant about, ect. If what someone is tweeting about irritates you, chances are they were not a good fit anyways, even if you had not seen that.

So in short, my opinion is people should keep doing what they are doing, it shouldn’t hurt business, but possibly help it, by sorting out clients that may not be a good fit for you.

Of course you could always go back to 1999 when Transparency was not a trend or desire from people. Censor your twitter account, build websites with tables in frontpage, or if you’re really daring, open up that font book and use comic sans for your next project!

I used to think the way that was described in this article. I was very careful to post only business related content to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Then, I started thinking like many of the above folks. If someone is going to hire my services, I want them to know that I love the work that I do but that I also enjoy doing other things. I don’t post rude stuff to my social networking accounts, but I do post a mixture of business and personal stuff. I focus mainly on doing project work with small businesses and non-profits because I really enjoy getting to know the people that I’m working for (and maybe even make new friends). I don’t want them to think I’m “stuffy” and only think of work 24 hours a day. Personally, I don’t want to work for someone that only thinks of work 24 hours a day.

Will, you are leaving me a bit confused about your opinion on this topic. How is sharing that you ran 5 miles with a group of people equivalent to getting drunk and dancing on a desk at a company party? I think I just am confused as to why the specific tweets you listed in your post are ‘bad.’ One of the greatest reasons I use twitter and make it available for view on my own site is to show potential clients that I am friendly, have a good personality, and that I do stay active in the design community. Unfortunately, potential clients are not my only audience so I choose to tweet about a broader range of topics from personal to pointless and of course business-related.

It is important for freelancers to know that potential clients are most certainly reading into your background! So, if you choose to share your twitter in a way to reflect your personality you need to stay away from tweets like ‘I hate doing work for this client.’ At the same time it’s kind of nice to share common hardships of being a designer with other designers because they understand your point of view.

I don’t think any employer should be looking through peoples tweets to make a judgement on weather or not he should hire someone. That just sounds plain silly to me.

While I know it happens, I think it’s ridiculous. That’s what interviews and second interviews are for.

I think this XKCD comic is incredibly relevant, and really sums up my feelings about this post quite succinctly. http://xkcd.com/137/

If you don’t want to hire me because I get all political on my personal Twitter account and that makes you uncomfortable, I don’t want to work for you. Simple as that.

Honestly, I don’t think you should be going to someone else’s social networking account to check up on them. To be perfectly blunt, if you can find out via more reliable means to verify that someone is responsible and does quality work, use them. Even if someone does go out and drink every weekend, is it honestly any of your business if they work hard and reliably during the week? I understand that you are trying to warn people about protecting their image, and I agree from a pragmatic standpoint. Still, I think people honestly need to lighten up and mind their own business.

The other issue I have with checking social media is that you can’t be entirely sure that the account you are checking on belongs to the person in question. I’m not currently freelancing (though I do have some very steady subcontract work), so I don’t have much a presence on the internet. When I put my name into google, one of the first results is a myspace account of a man with my name. He’s roughly my age. He loves to lift weights, drink alot, sleeps around, and ironically enough hates liberals. I, on the other hand, am moderately liberal, virtually celibate, don’t drink, and get my exercise through martial arts, and I don’t have a myspace account. If you weren’t careful in your ‘investigation’, you wouldn’t hire me, in spite of the fact that the individual in question is complete opposite of me.

I agree with most of this post. However I keep my social networking separate (I use Twitter and LinkedIn for work and Facebook for personal stuff) for my benefit. I don’t want to have to think about censoring myself for my clients on Facebook, and I don’t want my friends to have to constantly read about my work on Twitter. I like to keep some separation between work and life, and find that this strategy really helps. I can check my Facebook without thinking about work.

I do think social media helps bring a “social” element into the professional sphere though, and try to make my Tweets a little more personable.

Interesting discussion here too. I’m guessing I’m in the minority in trying to keep personal and professional so separate?

I’m afraid I disagree with the post, and agree with other commenters. I read this first thing this morning and was so paranoid! But then I got to thinking…

Personally, I’d rather hire someone with personality. When you interview for a job, they are looking not only at your knowledge and portfolio, but whether you’d be a good fit for the team. If you only tweet business-y stuff, it’s similar to just emailing your portfolio and never having a personal conversation with a potential client. I’d rather know people, and I’d rather people know me, not just business.

Secondly, when I worked in an office with other coworkers, my interactions with them were very similar to the things I tweet now. A good mix of personal and business and skills development and deadline freakouts and…and… Now that I work at home, Twitter is my way of having coworkers, and I don’t really say much differently than I would in person (just shorter – ha!).

All that to say, I do limit my tweets to things that have substance, and I avoid things like “I am drinking coffee”. I also refrain from complaining, moaning, Debbie Downer-ing, etc. I use Facebook for personal info. That’s my way of separating personal from business.

This is just my perspective. Having two Twitter accounts would be way too much and I’d never actually work. I think not getting anything done is worse than divulging my thoughts on the world alongside my thoughts on my work. And so far, this has not at all made my business slow down!

Fuck that, I’m a freelancer who works hard at what I do. I started freelancing to escape the corporate lifestyle. I think people hire freelancers as they want to do company with a person not another company. If one of my clients can’t handle me doing work in my underwear, while drinking beer they should go hire a cheap company in India.

Just kidding, seriously, it is a good idea for your own personal privacy (weather your freelancing or not) to keep tabs on what you are uploading to the net (twitter, facebook, etc). This can effect more than just your career it can effect your ability to take out a loan, rent a car or even open a bank account. However I would always hire a person based on their abilities and not their personalities. It is really none of my business if that person chooses to club baby seals on the weekend (unless I worked for a zoo or something). Just thinking out of the box.

I agree with many of the posts here and do not agree with you. Is there something wrong with showing that you’re actually human? Some of the most boring tweeps only post link after link of sometimes the same articles/blogs. Coming off as an extremist is probably not a good idea, nor are tweets ravaged by misspellings but if you’ve been keeping up with the social media world I’m sure you know that the lines are blurring. On my FB page I have old high school classmates, former co workers and current friends, as well as some business associates. Having two FB pages would be absolutely crazy. Perhaps you should loosen up a bit an realize that we are not just business machines, we are warm blooded humans as well.

I’ve been using Twitter for some time and can’t find a good use for it.

90% of my first 100 followers were “Twitter Leaches” that followed with the hope of get me to buy their weight-loss pill, their “discovery” of how to make $500 a day sleeping, or the only MLM system that actually works. I have had NO referrals to my website (which is in the url) even though my goal is to give practical advice to consumers on how to save money (like consumer reports).

Most comments are comprised of senseless comments about what they are doing or what they are promoting.

Twitter also does very little to limit leach followers who display or advertise lewd pictures and porn.

I personally am disappointed in Twitter and don’t see a good use of it at all.

While I agree you need to mind what you say, I think perhaps the list of example tweets is what’s throwing the whole thing in the direction of being too picky. So what if the tweets are about food or family. Now bitching and moaning about clients, or how much you hate a certain job is certainly a big NO. Even leaving off the clients names, it tells a prospective client that you could be the next subject, if you aren’t perfect. No one wants to be the source material for the next rant.

I just wouldn’t Follow someone who was mostly business unless I was looking to use it as an RSS feed on their work… which is often repetitive if they’re doing their self promotion correctly with a true RSS feed off a business blog. I don’t post important news on twitter alone. That would be like counting on post-it notes for your self promotion. And it would be like reading Google Ads if that’s all I posted. No thanks.

And as other posters have said, if a client’s going to take exception to me having a life, it would likely be the job from hell anyway. Again, I think your article is an important topic, but too far toward sterilizing all communication.

With all due respect, there are as many ways to use Twitter as there are people who use it. Of course, smart self-employed people pay attention to their online persona and behave accordingly.

However, if employers genuinely want a clear division between work and play, they should start by not reading potential hires’ personal blogs and tweets.

First, thank you for posting this article. It brings up a great discussion topic.

I use twitter @eMarketingVA and I love it. I can honestly say that my top clients have come to me directly through twitter.

I don’t do anything fancy when I tweet. I just tweet out really valuable information that I feel anyone within my network/niche should know about. I participate in the pertinent conversations that attract my attention and just let the rest go by.

I don’t feel that I would ever judge someone by watching their “random” tweets however, I sure would be quick to judge someone by the valuable content they are sharing. Thus, it really would not matter to me if a few “water cooler” tweets went by every now and then.

It would be actually really neat if I did tweet about my “extra hot latte” from Starbucks and they happened to send me a tweet back, don’t you think? Actually a tweet back from a “strong” twitter account is like getting an amazing backlink from a popular website. Drives more traffic and increases your twitter page rank.

Thanks again, great discussion!
Frances

“As someone who might hire you, that question does not interest me in the least”

So why then as someone who wants to hire someone, you are searching on Twitter for them?!”

Twitter is a tool for just that, telling what you do right now. It’s a bad tool for marketing! So employers shouldn’t even look up things on Twitter!

You’ve completely missed the point on this post. If everyone used twitter purely as “business personality” it wouldn’t EXIST. The whole reason that twitter has become so successful is because people CAN see the people behind the business. Not just the shiny polished exterior.

It’s not practical to have 2 seperate accounts, and really, what would be the point of that? You’d be putting half as much effort into each account, and ultimately, it wouldn’t work.

I have been using Twitter for about 18 months or so and actually teach a course on how to use Twitter to connect with your target audience, build your brand and increase your client opportunities. While I agree that a good majority of your tweets have to “add value” to your community and offer something that would be relevant to the target audience you are trying to reach, I think you might be missing the whole point of Social Networking.

I do “socialize” on Twitter, but with the target audience I am seeking to reach. It is entirely valuable to my business and I am connect with those people that might eventually become great JV partners, clients, customers etc… So, you might call it “Strategic Socializing”! But, to just spew out ALL business-focussed tweets, I think people will miss your personality.

I agree with you that I don’t like to follow people who constantly talk about super trivial stuff, but I won’t fault someone if they “share their life’ on occasion – that shows they are a real person. Just the other day, I shared a couple tweets on the joys of coaching my daughter’s U7 soccer team – I got some very funny tweets back from my network (people I am seeking to do business with) and it built some new relationships I had not really developed yet. So, I find that the personal can sometimes lead to the business side..

Also, the notion of having two Twitter accounts is simply not realistic – I barely have enough time to spend on one account than add another Social Networking activity to my plate.

While I can appreciate where you are coming from here, I wouldn’t judge or label a prospective designer or VA for some of their random tweets – I don’t necessarily think that is a clear indicator of their great skills and experience.

Heh, I do the exact opposite of what you suggest . Not only is my twitter mostly personal and often trivial, but I pull the feed directly onto the front page of my professional website, so all my potential clients can see what I ate for lunch.

It’s not for everyone, but I like that I tend to attract clients who are interested in the personality I show and who think my diverse interests are an asset.

I’m pretty much in firm disagreement with this post.

Making friends is so, so crucial for business – and you can’t make friends if you’re cold and professional 24/7.

I can think of countless examples of entrepreneurs and freelancers who “put it all out there” on the web and become successful in spite of, or perhaps because of, that approach.

That doesn’t mean you should tweet about how your latest client is pissing you off or how you’re miserable doing your work – that is flat-out idiotic. But remove the humanity from your online voice and watch how fast people stop listening to you altogether.

“Safe Marketing” is forgettable marketing.

The advice of creating separate accounts for your professional/personal use is utterly terrible.

I just skimmed through the posts here (most of them i totally agree with) and half read this article. I have to say, the reason I went Freelance was to be able to be my authentic self. I am better off putting someone off that will not like me for me. Because I am no good at being a faker. What I am good at is producing quality work, sticking to an agreement and enjoying myself in that process. If someone is so staunching that they can’t stand my fun loving tweets, then it probably isn’t a good match. I like my wanna be rockstar status. That is why I love freelancing.

From the point of view of a hirer, I agree with the post. :/ So that puts me in the minority.

Personally, if I’m doing my due diligence on a potential employee by looking up their business journal/blog or whatever you want to call the specific network and all I get are trivial personal posts, I wouldn’t hire him. Obviously the person needs a dictionary to learn the difference between business and personal.
A bit of personality is fine (i.e. I was making a ham sandwich when the shape of this mustard blob gave me a fantastic idea for a new design! ), but if s/he is going on about the stress of raising kids I’ll skip right over them. I’m honestly not interested unless the post includes a “I won’t be reachable for x-number of days because of this”, and along those lines a simple “due to a personal matter I won’t be reachable for blah blah blah” would be much preferred.
Hate to bust a few bubbles, but 9 out of 10 times skill beats personality unless one of the potential employees is flat out rude. But then I was raised by a businessman.

For personal journals, I don’t really see why it’s relevant to look at them unless you’re questioning someone’s ethics and think they’re dumb enough to post about it publicly.
If he gets smashfaced on weekends but all his work proves to be excellent and on time, who gives a damn? None of that matters unless it starts to interfere with the project(s) I hired that person for, and I still wouldn’t look at their Twitter or whatever since I would tell him to get his butt back in gear or he’s fired.

From the Freelancer’s POV, there’s a fine line of not overwhelming potential clients with my quirky personality on the first meeting while still being charming enough to get them to hire me. XD This is in person though, since I haven’t bothered trying to do business over social networks yet.
I do have personal journals, but the usernames on them are completely different from my business look ups to keep any due diligence from finding them. Plus my real name is so common it’s not worth Googling. You’ll find everybody except me.

What I don’t understand why people think they’re lying if they’re not on full-blast THIS IS ME. First impressions still count last I checked, and toning it down long enough to get comfortable with someone before you start in on your crazy family history isn’t going to hurt anybody. Allow your work to speak first, then let in that you know Klingon. ^_~

Although it looks like many believe that pure-business association is fading out, I don’t agree. Most potential clients are still looking for that professionalism. If they want a personality they flip on the TV.

I’m in the minotiry here. I agree with the post – but I already have 2 Twitter accounts. One personal, one business. My personal account is closed (I approve all followers); my business account is open to all. I use HootSuite to tweet from either account, and as you can guess, I send interesting web dev links, etc. through my business account, and keep my personal tweets, well, personal. I find it helps me sort out my life too – along with keeping a professional side of me out there.

It doesn’t take any extra time (thanks to HootSuite), and keeps the two sides of me apart. You want the whole story – subscribe to both. Your choice.

Hi Everyone,

I love FS. Reading this site for ages and have never commented before.

Today, I would like to share an interesting fact about the hiring process (read over 1000 applications, interviewed over 100 people and hired, trained, fired and promoted 25). When I receive a resume that is crinkled with coffee stained and still has some of your blueberry jam on it, it tells me that person is going to be sloppy.

SAME GOES FOR THEIR WEB PERSONA!

· “its nice and warm here today”
hmmm, missing punctuation, that sucks because I hope that they can catch my errors.

· “I feel like chicken tonight!”
This is ACTUALLY good, unless your potential client is vegetarian.

· “OMG are teenage daughters meant to be this much stress?”
inappropriate family comment, should be discussed with another caring adult or even the person in question on how to strengthen their relationship so it is not so draining.

· “Making a pot roast”
Read above.

· “only another 4 hours of work”
I’m burnt out today and need to get the hell out of here… but instead I’ll whine.

Okay, so with all that being said (please don’t flame) there is a simple solution and the original poster made a great comment.

Keep two accounts. Obviously one is business (using your business website and email).

However the second personal (using your personal email and contact info) perhaps you should come up with a pen name. So that you can actually say and do what you feel like doing. Whine, complain and do all those things that are considered poor human behaviour if you wish. Just remember to never post your business, client or project names in your personal posts (and never give up your personal screen name in your business posts.)

Make sure that your business contacts can’t find your personal log and vice versa, sounds harsh and you may not like that I just said that, but until you have enough money to not work, it does matter. Please trust me, I want to see you kick butt in the world.

Taking this step will present a more polished front to your clients and yes to the person who may hire you.

One more note, when I do research, I don’t discount someone simply because they say something inappropriate, it’s because I cringe when I think of how their personality will translate into work performance. Someone who is always complaining online, is most likely going to be a complainer at work as well. On the other hand someone who posts funny comments, interesting tidbits and keeps a sensible approach to their web persona will actually be more intriguing.

You can’t hide what you are. Neither can I.

All the best,
Mr. too scared to post my real name on my first post.

This post is unbelievable (and sadly) true. I personally don’t like twitter but i see everyday the lack of professionalism by the ones who uses.

In the end you said that someone had “just 4 hours to finish work”, that happened in my company and when my boss saw it they had a “private conversation”. Not about the “being bored at work” part but by the image passed of the company itself.

I disagree with most of this post. I’m definitely NOT going to hire a 1 dimensional (professionally fronted) person and don’t want to have to go looking for his personal tweeting account (if he even has one) to try and find out what kind of character he has (or doesn’t have). The examples you gave were all things I’d want to see mixed in periodically in someone’s tweets. It’s what makes they relatable, authentic and approachable. People tend to do business with people they like and to people who are similar to them and you’re not going to find that out if the person is holding back who they really are.

Very nicely written! Social networking will soon become the most effective way of building your professional career and creating a personal brand. However, one will have to invest time in learning the effectiveness of these sites and ways to use them properly.

By the way, if anyone is looking to make the most of their LinkedIn account, check out networking expert Jan Vermeiren’s new book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn”. You can find a free lite version at http://www.how-to-really-use-linkedin.com/

Twitter ( and other social media sites) are perfect for connecting with people you would otherwise never hook up with.

Most freelancers work in isolation from the rest of the world, and it give’s an opportunity to interact with something akin to a worldwide virtual office.

You can comment and read others comments on current affairs, on interesting facts and life in general – if you need to know something, just ask the question – someone will know the answer.

I find Twitter to be like the workplace I am no longer part of, only bigger than otherwise possible, and with a massive user group of very well informed people I can connect to – I help them – and they help me, like lots of things in life – some get it – some don’t.

Jim Montgomery

I try very hard to never post anything that could be taken out of context as “complaining” or putting others down on Twitter.

I do, however, agree with many other comments here. I am “social” on Twitter and I talk to others about what some of my followers may perceive to be “mundane” but I use it to build rapport and to show a genuine interest in what other people do and want.

Did all my followers need to see me respond to someone today who prompted me to do 50 jumping jacks? Nope, but the fun part of it was that a bunch of other people got into it and did them as well.

I would prefer to see someone realize I am a human who is fun and takes things lightly and genuinely cares about others than for them to think I am uncaring or only care about my business.

I came from Corporate America and I found it to be stodgy and restricting. Being a solo-preneur now Twitter has helped me blossom into the person that I was denying for many years.

If someone decides not to hire me for my services based on my tweets, as many others have said, then it probably would not have been the best fit anyhow and I’m more concerned with fit.

Michelle

I appreciate the thoughtful commentary on this topic. One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is the ability to control your privacy settings (at least on Facebook; I don’t use Twitter). My settings are set that only friends can see my wall. Anyone searching on me from Google or another search engine would only see my “info” tab. My wall generally contains posts that are a combination of personal, activist, political, and professional postings on a range of topics. By getting a multidimensional perspective about me, a friend could refer anything of interest to me, which just might include work.

Just because an employer CAN research a potential employee’s personal life, should they? I think the author of this post failed, if only slightly, in his ethical responsibility as an employer.

I say this as both an employer and a hacker who is *really* good at information retrieval. Just because I can, without leaving my desk, find someone’s blog, twitter, facebook, but then also SSN, dating site profile, credit report, criminal report, employment history, amazon book preferences, religious affiliation, political affiliation, medical history etc — must I do so?

It;s kinda scummy IMHO. I hoping this kind of shame-based professional business blandness dies out with Baby Boomers… I’m tired of the squares running our society!

How is looking as someone’s “public” information ethically irresponsible? If there are things you don’t want people to know about you or you just don’t care what you put up, ignoring the possible consequences, then that person has failed in their PERSONAL responsibility.

Now hacking for information that isn’t public, that’s ethically irresponsible.

Live the life you live and be prepared to take responsibility for your actions online and off. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t say to your audience face to face. I think exposing your soft underbelly on twitter is all right and I would much rather hire or work for someone who is open to sharing their personality and personal beliefs with me.

@ Nick Yeoman. After reading your comment I laughed and then did a Google search for Nick Yeoman. Google listed a link to your comment on this website, complete with profanity, on page one of the search result. I think you proved Nicks point rather well.

Correction: I think you proved Will Kenny’s point rather well.

I would rather not hire anyone who wastes their time Twittering when they should be working.

Good points, all. I stand firmly in the camp of don’t post anything that could come back to haunt you. Simple common sense.

I’m a new Twitter user, and do so simply for business purposes. And, contrary to my original feelings about Twitter, I’m now finding it pretty darn cool.

That said, my gauge of what makes something worthwhile to post about or follow is this: relevance. In other words…who cares if you had a ham sandwich? Really, who? BUT…if you just ate a wonderful sandwich and want to tweet about the DELI where it was purchased…now your tweet is relevant. Not only that, but you’ve done the deli a service with your recommendation.

Of course, tweeting about that ham sandwich (with or w/o the deli info) could work against you if you’re trying to win a vegan restaurant project!

I work with people trying to get work and with employers all the time. I think the role of Twitter and Facebook and such is really easily misunderstood. I really don’t think it matters if you had chicken last night or want to go home four hours early – the point is, people hire *people* – all a potential hirer really wants to know is whether you’re the kind of person they will want to work with and who will get on with the rest of the team.

If you scrub your social networking profile so clean it looks like a sparkle advert, you’ll just end up making the potential hirer look around at the tumbleweed under their desk and feel uncomfortable. Be yourself – that’s the whole point.

One word of warning, though – *do* check out your name on Google – not because you might accidentally come across a picture of yourself with your head down the loo at someone’s stag do, but because someone with the same name might just have done so. Be clear on your social networking profiles that you are ‘John Doe, London-based freelance designer’ or whatever – just identify yourself clearly as the John Doe you’d like to be.