What social network lifestream sharing and web marketing philosophy do you recommend for a freelancer?
February 13, 2012 11:30 PM Subscribe
What social network lifestream sharing and web marketing philosophy do you recommend for a freelancer?
It's kinda hard to be systematic about this question. It's rather big.
I'm trying to figure out a philosophy and workflow for integrating my website and social presence on the web. It's complicated in two ways. The first is that the line between personal and professional is very blurry. The social aspect allows us to show our personal side in professional settings, but it's a bit of a tightrope to know what is too much.
The second is that since Facebook is not crawl-able by Google's bots, my content isn't indexed for the search engine. So this forces me to rethink my content and try to get it out of Facebook. But then this furthers the personal/professional problem.
Right now, my strategy is to post outside Facebook first, either at my blog, or through twitter, and then use twitter to post status to Facebook or to link to a blog post.
But as I migrate out of Facebook, if I put my photos on Picassa, they will be visible by my Google+ people. And I'm not sure whether photos of my daughter's wedding have any meaning to someone who may want to hire me as a speaker for an event.
It's this giant soupy mess. I think about it a lot. And can't really seem to come up with something that makes sense.
Thanks in advance for any help.
posted by jeffreyclong to computers & internet (4 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
Really, I think your philosophy just needs to follow from Metafilter Guideline #1: Don't Be A Dick. Then it doesn't matter what you upload or to where.
If you use a consistent online identity to make yourself easy to search for, and obey the Don't Be A Dick rule, anybody who runs across you professionally site and wants to know more about you can use the usual plethora of search tools and won't find anything professionally damaging. If you absolutely can't get by without having some way to be a dick online, use a separate identity for that and be careful not to leave behind clues that will link that to your respectable identity (EXIF data in photos being one that's commonly overlooked).
Don't even try to use Facebook or Google+ or social media in general for the purpose of presenting a professional face to the world. Looking professional, even in 2012, is more about hiding information than sharing it. Hell, in 2012 anybody who can hide a bit of information automatically earns respect.
I'm not sure whether photos of my daughter's wedding have any meaning to someone who may want to hire me as a speaker for an event.
Probably not.
Since you're already running your own site, complete with a vanity domain name, it seems to me that there's your ideal platform for professional self-promotion. Put content and/or links there that would be meaningful to somebody who might want to pay you to exercise your professional skills. This can and probably should be quite sparse. It's basically your online business card.
Set up a subsite, maybe blog.yoursitename.com, that's got all the chatty personal sharing stuff you've presently got on your main site. Links to stuff on the subsite will be the ones you hand out to family and friends. It can and probably should have a link to your professional site, but your professional site should not have links back to your online-personal-life site beyond some kind of contact form.
posted by flabdablet at 2:59 AM on February 14, 2012 [3 favorites]