Different people draw different lines between work and play.  Sometimes it depends on your job, sometimes your passion for your job, sometimes it’s your personality.  Certainly, I’ve been in both camps before, refusing to do work or even think about it in spare time and working at midnight because my work, passions and hobbies overlap.  Work Life Balance is a thorny issue, and working with facebook throws you right into the middle of the thorn-bush.

The most definite way to separate work and play on facebook is to have two profiles.  I know people who do this.  They have their work profile, with their work friends and their social profile with their old and new friends.  Initially, this seems like a great idea…but there are drawbacks.

1. Social Networking is concept that crosses boundaries.  Most of us socialise, at least to a point, with the people we work with and sometimes the people we have worked with in the past.  Anyone who works in a role that requires networking will also know that you don’t entirely switch off when you’re socialising.  If someone says they work in your field, you’re quickly getting their number.  So, which category to these people go into?  Work profile?  Social Profile?  Both?  There are times when you might even want this cross-over
2. It’s pretty likely that, unless all your work and social contacts never ever meet, your two profiles would collide.  For example, you get married and invite some colleagues.  They tag you in a photo under one profile (see part 2) and your friends in another.  The two both become viable and someone adds the “wrong” you.
3. Logging In – It’s hard enough to remember you passwords and emails for the accounts you do have – imagine remembering what account you’re logged in as as well.  It would be very easy to be logged in as personal and add a work contact and vise versa.

It’s worth noting that, if you have added anyone who is senior to you, anyone who has been into your shop, or someone who was your service user you’ve already crossed the line into using facebook for work.  So play it safe and think the whole thing through.

Assuming you d0n’t have two profiles, these are the stages I think for planning to make use of facebook professionally:

1. Think about how you are going to use your profile professionally.  Are you going to use it to network, or are you going to add customers / service users too?  Make your rules and stick with them.
2. Decide on some categories, which will later be used for setting privacy levels.  Would you, for example, want colleagues to be able to see some things that wider work colleagues could not?  For each setting, you will need to be able to group people.  Bare in mind that your needs may change.  For example, you may not have an issue with your boss seeing your whole facebook page…but what if things change?  You could create a new category then, but it’s probably easier to have the categories set up from the start.  I currently have 17 different categories on my facebook.
3. Check with your work about a social networking policy.  If they don’t have one,  do not assume you’re OK.  If they have one, read it and learn it.  If you think it’s unfair, bring it up with your manager, but don’t flout it.  If there is no policy try and get your manager to draw up some clear, written, guidance about social networking.  At least that way you know where you stand.  If you don’t, you run the risk that some other clause in your contract, normally one about disrepute, may be used against you.
4. Don’t assume that, because it is in your own time, your work do not have a right to say what happens.  You are interacting with colleagues, customers and potential customers in a very public way.  If you declared your work was boring on the shop floor you would be disciplined.  The same is true on facebook.  You can prevent certain people from seeing certain things (see part 2) but if it is findable through a way you’ve not thought of and it is found, expect consequences.  This story is a good example.
5. Look at your role and think about conflicts of interest.  Go through any groups, pages and anything else that could associate you with topics of people you don’t want to be associated with.  For example, if you work in local government, groups criticizing the council might not be a good idea, along with political groups.

After that bout of paranoia, it’s time to move onto setting the privacy control to make sure the right people see the right things.  That’s Part 2….coming soon.