Professional VS Personal Accounts: Should They be Separated?

Hello All,

First I’d like to start this post with a shameless plug, I’ve made a second Instagram account that you can follow at @kellibdenley ☺️. Which leads me perfectly into the topic of discussion for today: should you have separate accounts for your personal and professional life? 🤔

Had you asked me this question two years or even a year ago, I’d probably have a different answer. Today, the answer is… it depends. To me, every social platform serves a different purpose, and that purpose is constantly changing as they go through updates and new development. Today I’m only going to cover Facebook and Instagram, which are the two platforms I use the most. Let’s break it down.

Facebook: If you use your Facebook account for your business/ company, you should have a separate business page set up. That will allow you to insert certain information that a personal page will not. Example, hours of operation, location, menu, services, etc.. So for me personally, I do not have a second business Facebook account. I have my page in a pretty tight privacy lock down, and only accept friend request of people that I know in person. I do share pictures of my daughter, husband and other family members, so I try to keep it just to my circle of real life connections. So the short answer for me about having a second Facebook account is: no. In my belief the best practice would be to set up a business or professional page for your company or side hustle as its own entity. Not to have a *Your Name* second account.

Instagram: Now you can follow the same practices as above for Instagram as well (which I recommend if you have a licensed business/ company). However I do have a second personal page (as mentioned in my introduction). Instagram has made quite the transition with all their new updates recently. Moving from a more personal platform to a business hub. With the addition of the shopping tab, more and more business pages are linking their online shops. Which is nice for them, but does make it feel a little more like Amazon, than Instagram. That being said, I do think it’s good practice to have a personal and professional account tied to yourself, and not just your business. If you’re like me, you post a lot of family pictures and share snippets of your life through stories. Which is good for your professional life as well, but you may not feel 100% comfortable sharing so much of your family with the public. Instagram is a great platform to connect with people from all over. But I don’t need everyone on the platform seeing pictures of my daughter and husband. If they are looking me up for my professional reasons, then that is what they are interested in seeing anyways. So on my professional page I do let you into my life a bit, but keeping it generally work related. While on my personal page you’ll find pictures of my family, animals, home, etc..

I encourage you to start a second page if you’ve been thinking about it. I contemplated it for a long time, and once I started my journey into Freelancing I took the plunge. And truthfully it’s been kind of fun. Following and connecting with people and pages that I probably wouldn’t have with my personal account. Exploring new content to post, and just having a bit more creative freedom. If you’re like me and need reassurance before doing something, this is it. Take this post as your “go ahead, follow your gut” advice. And if you do end up creating a new account, let’s connect!! 😁

Talk soon!