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This post is a continuation of what I wrote in June.
At first glance, one would not think of Facebook as a professional networking site. When I finally signed up over a year ago, I was shocked at the number of business contacts that I had that were already on Facebook. I quickly learned that I had to learn how to keep professional and personal sides of my Facebook account separate.
Here are a few tips that have helped me keep my two worlds apart:
- Create Friend Lists: Separate your friends based on how you met them, etc. For example in my profile I have quite a few lists going. Networking for people I met through business networking events, clients for clients, high school, college. Etc. Just click on the “Friends” tab to edit and create lists.
- When in doubt, let people see the Limited Profile: When people request you as a friend, but you don’t remember how or where you met, make their default view the limited profile. You can control what can be seen in the limited profile. If it’s a business contact, they will not see last year’s Halloween picture of you being “less than stellar”. Go to “Settings > Privacy Settings >Profile Privacy” to edit and choose who sees what based on your friend lists.
- Control What Applications are visible in your profile
Go to ” Settings > Application >Settings“ - Control who finds you: You can control who finds you in Facebook via the search privacy settings. You can select whether or not you want people to see your picture or if they can add you as a friend. Go to “Settings > Privacy > Search” to access.
To avoid the right people seeing the wrong applications, you can select which people get to see what applications on your profile. For instance, I don’t want my clients or my networking contacts to see who poked me so I blocked them from see this particular application.
Click Here for a screenshot
UPDATE: For a primer on social media, check out my guest post on the Admissions Blog at Metropolitan College of New York.
With these tips, you will be in the driver’s seat of your social networking destiny.
[...] the business world is Facebook. To learn how to keep you professional and personal life separate, click here. MCNY also has a fan page on Facebook. It is also located on the MCNY Social Networking [...]
[...] Keep Your Personal and Professional Life Separate on Facebook [...]
[...] Just today a colleagues of mine skyped me to let me know that she’d take me off her friends at Facebook in an effort to keep personal and professional networking separate, since she did not want too many friends of friends knowing about the mundane things in her life. While we were tossing privacy concerns back and forth, she then came upon two links providing helpful information on how to obtain more granular control over your privacy at Facebook than is afforded with the rather limited number of default options available. http://nextsteph.com/stephblog/networking/social-networking/keep-your-personal-and-professional-life…; [...]
[...] and personal separate in social networking?” ). There is also practical information posted on how to keep your personal and professional life separate on Facebook and on professional profile personal privacy, among [...]
I’m trying to follow your instructions, but my facebook page doesn’t give me the options yours seems to. I created a friends list, but it isn’t showing up when I try to customize privacy . . . .
Hello Jennifer,
You have to customize privacy for each application, not separately.
I too created a friends list, but the “some friends” or “custom” is not showing up in options in the privacy settings.
Any suggestions?
FaceBook changed its layout, therefore the location of the Privacy Settings has changed. Here are the directions to manage your settings.
You have to go to “Settings” on the top of the screen in the middle right and select “Application Settings“.
You then see all your FaceBook applications that you used in the past month.
Where is says “Show:” scroll down to “Added to Profile” .
You will then see all your FaceBook applications attached to your profile.
Click on “Edit Settings” on any of the applications and a pop-up box will show up.
You can then see under the “Profile” menu, the “Privacy:“.
By the lock icon, you can then select who can see the application on your profile.
Thank you. This is the best tutorial I’ve seen on managing Facebook relationships.
I found just 3 lists to be adequate. Full, Limited, and Related.
I have a question – how about controlling who sees your “Pages” – the ones you have become a fan of? I don’t see “Pages” as an application or as a section whose privacy I can change.
Would be really nice to have control over this, too. (Really, really nice to have control over which, individual pages show up in your list, but that may be a bit TOO granular.)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. Facebook is a powerful media tool but you have to separate your personal and professional contacts.
[...] out this blog for some great tips on how to customize your Facebook [...]
why not just use facebook for friends/family and keep everything set to private? As far as control is concerned, it doesn’t matter how much you restrict your access because your friend may have another friend who overlooks your profile while on the same computer and view the content. not to say that facebook isn’t a nice marketing tool but there’s no fool proof method to isolate your content if you decide to place it online. don’t assume also that your media automatically disappears either once deleted from the website. bottom line? be very selective what you publish.
[...] privacy settings. If you don’t want to manage two accounts, use these tips to manage privacy to keep your personal and professional lives [...]
What good is these other privacy options when all your friend lists can still view your wall posts ? Facebook needs to secure up the content meaning all your posts, comments, etc.
Having only friends and friends of friends is not going to cut it.