Multiple Social Media Accounts and the Balance between Life and Work

This week 23 Things explored several social media with us. These social media includes Twitter, Flicker, Pinterest, Instagram and so forth.I have been using some of these for some time whilst registered with the others per the task of 23 Things. Please have a look of my different social media pages via the hyperlink should you be interested.

Thing 4 appeared to me striking since I have hardly thought of my social media accounts would be so easily reached by simply typing my name on Google (even my Airbnb accounts appeared!!!!). It really urges me to reconsider how to manage all my social media accounts as well as how to present myself on those social media where I intend to look professional.

The social media explored in Thing 5 and 6, albeit seem to be for everyday life sharing at first sight (and probably mainly used for this purpose by most), can in fact also be used by researchers to market themselves. Pinterest in particular seems fun to me in that some easy-to-understand image depicting complex research issues could be found. Flicker too is enjoyable to search whatever ‘keywords’ come into my mind. It is surprising how many high quality, among which some are carefully edited, one could find there. And the most amazing thing is that many of these photos are subtly ‘themed’.

In terms of using these social media as a researcher, however, I failed to picture myself any of them to promote my research, probably because they have been just part of my ‘non-professional’ daily social life (although I do not really use them quite often). But I do think I will consider to use some of them to strategically promote myself as a researcher in the near future. Twitter appears to be a good place to start as I have seen some ‘serious’ posts there. For instance, I have followed for quite a while some accounts associated with sustainable tourism and there have been some interesting and critical reports or comments from these accounts.

Nonetheless, from my perspective, the most challenging thing in managing multiple social media is not linking them all together but to separate them. In fact, it would seem easy to synchronise different social media accounts but that is likely to appear intimidating (at least for me :)) as it will be like one personal life being ‘robbed’ as one will restrict posting ‘non-professional’ on social media where one needs to professional. To separate the different accounts, however, would be a lot of work. Therefore, I think it would be helpful if 23 Things could provide some practical tips to balance work and personal life on social media.

Yet, someone cynical like me would think it is ironic that while both the potential employers and employees (including me sadly) understand better than anyone else that the so-called professional looking social media account is nothing more than a show to improve employability and can only tell little about the real person, but are still obsessed with it. I do insist that it would be better if both employers and employees could accept that all of us have an ‘unprofessional’ side. We may all enjoy a lazy weekend, like some celebrities (and like their posts) and do some crazy stuff every now and then, and would also like to share them through these social media. After all, Twitter and Instagram, unlike Academia and Linkin, are not specially designed for professional purpose.