Personal Business, Business Personality, and Social Media

There is an interesting post by Rob Hahn, AKA Notorious Rob, that touches close to home for me — Personal Business, Business Personality, and Social Media: An Interview with Todd Carpenter, NAR. The issue at hand is whether people should maintain two separate personalities online — one for their business life and one for their personal life. This is an issue I face every day given my very public job at Zillow.com.

Where do I stand on the issue? I’m with Todd — it’s extremely difficult to maintain separate personalities, and I don’t personally think it makes a lot of sense. So I don’t separate them. Just as my job at Zillow is part of my real life, my job is part of my life in the social media world as well; same goes for my passion for microfinance and traveling. That’s part of what makes me, well, ME. Why would I hide my microfinance and traveling interests from just my “business” connections, or why would I hide my interest in real estate from my “personal” connections? I wouldn’t. Sarah Cooper, who works for Jeff Turner at Real Estate Shows, agrees with me on the importance of personality in the business world with her comment on Rob’s post:

If people have to lean more towards personal or professional, I’d pick personal every time. I probably know what you do for business, if I need you or your services I can ask you about them and go to you for help. What I’d rather hear are the silly little details that make you *YOU* – that connects me to you and makes me choose you over all those others when it actually is time to make that business call. Keep it all business and you might as well just be someone in the yellow pages.

But, is my whole life public? No, and nor do I want it to be. My personal and business life used to be almost entirely intertwined — but I realized there does need to be a subtle, but distinct line between the two for me. In my case, I no longer accept Facebook friend requests from people I haven’t met in person or talked to on the phone (and I’ve grouped my connections and given each their own privacy settings). Sorry if you fall into this camp, but I got (and still get) way too many random friend requests from agents across the country who want to “network” and “build their referral network”. No offense, but I don’t want a bunch of agents I’ve never spoken to to see all my photos, comments, videos, etc that are meant for people I actually have real relationships with. Nor am I going to send a potential buyer to a random agent who has “friended” me. There are social networks out there meant for business. LinkedIn for example. For those who want to network for business, I suggest you use them. In my opinion, Facebook is not a way to market or network yourself with people you don’t know; it’s for staying connected with people you already know. Some may disagree with me, and that’s okay. Is there a way to build real relationships with strangers using Facebook? Absolutely, and I’ve done it — but that’s another topic in itself that I don’t want to go into here (trying to stay somewhat on topic!). Sorry for getting off on a rant, but my point of this paragraph is that you can have one online personality, while still drawing a line in the sand regarding personal vs business.

Bottom line –social media needs to be real. If you separate your business and personal personalities online, chances are pretty good you aren’t going to be a very interesting person to talk to online, and probably won’t get much business from social media as a result. Think about it — when was the last time you had a phone call or discussion in real life where you talked about NOTHING other than business? Sure it happens, but those are not usually successful conversations in my book. It’s the personal nuggets that build relationships — the weather, a recent flight, sports, common geography, a recent article you both read — ANYTHING other than business that can build some personal connection with the person you are speaking with. At the end of the day, as Sarah said in her comment, “Keep it all business and you might as well just be someone in the yellow pages”.