The Two Faces of Privacy on Facebook

With Facebook starting out as a personal network, it has been a hard transition for people to become used to it as also a professional network. Most use LinkedIn as a professional network, Facebook as a personal network, and Twitter is a hybrid that people are still trying to figure out. But with the growth rate of Facebook, many have started to turn to it as a personal branding tool and professional network. Marketers have begun turning to Facebook with Facebook Pages, Groups, and advertisements as a way to reach out to their prospects, customers, and fans.

This transition has created a dilemma for many folks because they are resistant to using Facebook as a professional network, yet their colleagues, competition, and companies are becoming active on the network. Also, as we develop friends in our industries, we want to extend that friendship and therefore turn to Facebook. This starts to blur that line even further between work and home. However, as Dawn Foster of WebWorkerDaily points out, we don�t want to confuse �personal� for �private�:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about �being personal� on social media websites, I think that many people confuse �personal� with �private.� The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

To deal with this dilemma, individuals typically have three options to choose from:

1. Maintain a single Facebook profile that combines personal and professional.

2. Maintain two different Facebook profiles: one personal and one professional.

3. Keeping Facebook only personal and not mixing work into it.

Each one of these has both upsides and downsides with not one clear answer or best practice, as of yet. Though it might not be clear yet, this will be important for you as a marketer or company.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign