If you put down the the fireworks long enough over the holiday weekend to pick up a paper or read news online, you may have seen the story of the British spymaster’s wife who outed him on Facebook.
It seems the wife of Sir John Sawers, next in line to run England’s super-secret spy agency MI6, had been using Facebook to share pictures of her husband and family and post updates on their whereabouts – not the kind of behavior covert operatives normally go in for.
As you can imagine, the British tabloids are having a field day, though as one British government official put it, how important to national security can it be to know Sawer wears Speedos.
But the incident points up the potential trouble of using social networks.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have gone out of their way to make it easy to update your status, so the world can know “What are you doing now?”
That’s a great way to keep colleagues and potential business partners apprised of your blog posts, projects, business ventures, convention stops or speaking engagements. But it’s also easy to end up mixing your business life with your personal life. In fact, social media gurus encourage you to devote a small portion of what you share on Twitter or blogs to real-life stuff, the better to make you sound human, not just a robo-pitchman for whatever it is you do or sell.
But as Mrs. Sawers found out, mixing things up can lead to trouble. So can providing so much about your business life you end up sharing details better left unsaid.
Major news media outlets have begun addressing this issue by crafting social media policies that, among other things, spell out what their writers can and can’t do on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The Wall Street Journal published guidelines in May with requirements that, among other things, reporters should avoid discussing articles before they’re published, meetings they’ve attended and “friending” potentially confidential sources.
Freelance writers aren’t normally beholden to a client’s social media usage requirments – unless they’re written into a contract, which is something I have yet to see.
So it’s up to you to decide what you should and shouldn’t share. Some suggestions:
* Don’t share specifics of an assignment. Crowdsourcing has become a popular for finding story sources, but there’s a way to share the general nature of what you’ll be writing about without giving everything away. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
* Remember everything you say online could be there forever. In the heat of the moment you may feel like sharing the ugly details of an assignment gone wrong, names and all. But in an industry where editors and writers move around almost monthly, so much openness can come back to haunt you. If you simply must vent, call a trusted friend, or use the writers’ message board you subscribe to, but consider not actually naming names.
* Use some social networks for work and some for fun. Some writers use Twitter and LinkedIn for work and Facebook for fun, so they can shield all of the personal stuff they share about their families, vacations and leisure activities from the potentially prying eyes of editors, readers and other nosy types. If this is how you want to roll, use the appropriate Facebook settings to keep your info private, and don’t feel bad about saying “No thanks” when business associates ask to connect with you there and redirect them to the networks you use for business.
If you’re on social networks, how do you keep your business and private lives separated?
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Michelle,
I use Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes and Facebook for personal communication. My information on all three does cross paths every now and then. I didn’t set out initially to keep them separate but I naturally fell into that pattern.
I often forget who my audiences are. I’m surprised when certain followers and friends comment on a post or mention my happenings when I see them in person. I think, “How did you know that about me?” I don’t have crowds in my social network yet but sometimes I still forget who’s out there watching. I say things to the masses that I may or may not have said to specific individuals. But that’s one thing I love about social media – it’s fairly real if you let it be.
A related point is that I know every person with whom I’m connected on Facebook and LinkedIn – not so on Twitter.
Thanks for your post!
Joellyn Detjen
Twitter | @joellyndetjen
Michelle,
It’s amazing to me what people say in public on social networks. They spew political and religious opinions (and venom!) without thinking they might be offending their connections. They talk about their prejudices, reveal intimate personal details, and make comments about employers and colleagues. I wonder if there will ever be a significant backlash that reverses this trend. I certainly hope so.
I accept friend requests from business contacts on Facebook, but use privacy settings to restrict what they can see. They don’t get access to my photos, wall posts, scrabble scores, etc.
@Anne: How do you pick and choose who your FB privacy settings apply to? I only see groups (Friends, Friends and Friends of Friends, etc.). The only way I see to name an individual specifically is to block them completely. I am a relative newbie to FB so if you could elaborate that would be great. I have a number of business contacts who are very FB active but not so much on Linkedin. The flexibility to friend them but determine what they alone access would be useful.
Okay, scratch that request. All of sudden the info is everywhere. Funny how that works.
In case anyone else is interested in where “everywhere” is, here’s a great post with tons-o-info on using FB for business. http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/facebook-for-business-superguide/
Nice post and follow-up comments. I also fall in to the “business on LinkedIn and Twitter, fun on facebook” category. But like a previous commenter, they do overlap for me somewhat also. I’ll post some personal comments on Twitter so it gives me a “face” and I’m not just advertising my web site, and I do post links to my current work to facebook so my friends know what I do for a living – you never know where your next source will come from!
-Louise, aka @ThoughtsHappen
Like you, I use LinkedIn and Twitter for business, Facebook for family and friends. I know all of the 480+ people I’ve connected to on LinkedIn because I use it as a contact manager for sources, writers, editors, etc. I don’t know everyone who follows me on Twitter; I know some of the people I follow there, and others I’ll agree to follow if they fall into one of several categories of followers I’m trying to cultivate – that’s a blog post for another day.
MVR
Well put. It’s easy to push the “Send” button on something you’re reacting to in the moment without thinking of the long-term ramifications. I liken this to the learning curve that people went through when office email was new.
MVR
I do the same things, mix a little business with fun on Facebook, and mix a little fun with business on Twitter. But LinkedIn is all business.
MVR