Should you have a separate personal and business facebook and twitter accounts?
There are several considerations to deliberate when separating your personal and professional social channels. Having a single social channel is simpler to manage and potentially cheaper to run through management dashboards, but a key issue is around how you perceive yourself and your company as a brand.
The solo-self-employed often do not differentiate themselves from their brand or see themselves and their brand as intrinsically linked. This could simply be the difference between being called Jane Doe Ltd or Wild Cat Design Ltd.
This is a deeper question about whether you should create a brand name or not, for this answer though, let’s ignore that debate and focus on how you manage your social media.
Posting content unrelated to your brand and industry, will reduce your ability to target the audience you want, grow your network and increase business.
For example, if you are a graphic designer in the fashion industry and you regularly post about your favourite designs and articles from Stylist to a network of people in the industry, then having one channel could reinforce yourself as a brand and increase your exposure to the correct audience. However, if you just post cat videos and the odd comment to friends and family, maybe less so relevant.
There is no one right answer to this question and there are many factors to consider. If you are serious about growing your social presence to gain new business, consider your audience and what they want to consume online. Then assess whether your personal social channels deliver this content to the audience you want. If it does not, then consider creating a business profile.
