How do I keep personal and public separate online?

I was surprised by this question that I was asked recently by someone who hasn’t yet got too involved with social media, but who felt that she needed to start her involvement from a work perspective.

My immediate reaction was why do you need to, though I am admittedly not of the generation where any drunken teenage exploits could have been captured for Facebook. Often the human or social aspect of the business you are dealing with can give you a deeper perspective and more insight, making that business interaction more personal and more meaningful, but as individuals reveal more of themselves online to strangers as well as to colleagues as friends, where is it expected or acceptable to draw a line?

In the same way you may not reveal every inner thought to the person you pass in the street without knowing them, you can exercise similar and maybe slightly more formal restraint as you expand or self-censor your online activity, and still put yourself forward as a balanced and professional individual who enjoys a rounded social life and has interests outside of work.

And like any other aspect of online activity, you should start with an overall strategy and reason for being active in the way you are active in each area you tackle. So over the next few blogs I will be looking at where and how you should start to get your online self in order, how to and to what degree you can control how you are presented online, how to grow your presence in an authentic and meaningful way for yourself and your audience, making it work for you, the amount of time and effort you need in order to get the results you want, and how to measure your effectiveness.

By looking in detail into aspects of self-presentation online, I hope to be able to address the question I was asked and also to rephrase it as the question that I might also have been asked – how do I understand the effects of what I do online across both personal and business and evaluate whether this is how I want to be seen, and how will this benefit me as I maintain my own authentic voice?