3a: Personal Vs Professional Networks

I noticed that fellow blogger Bethany Bullman had included Facebook as one of the many networks she uses for her profession and I found this posed an interesting question.

Can you benefit from joining you personal and professional networks?

In a previous post I wrote about the range of networks I use or have considered in terms of bettering my career as a professional ballet dancer and the importance I have found in keeping my personal life away from these networks. But am I being too strict about this?

Bethany opened up the idea to me of using Facebook to connect with the many people I know that are in the same profession for advice. Much like using "Word of Mouth" which is what I consider to be one of the networks I currently use and therefore Facebook would be a perfect addition to my way of doing this.

I realise that Facebook does offer very strict and specific choices in terms of privatising our profiles but for some reason I have trouble finding it ideal to use it as a professional network. It comes with the argument that we must be careful about what we publicly or even privately post as we never really know who may be able to read this and so it involving anything profesional with my personal life may not be the wisest decision.

I already use Flickr to contain an album of what I have done in my career but I also have an Instagram account that is private and purely for my personal entertainment.

I have seen that many businesses and professionals use these networks to promote their companies and a much wider scale than any smaller advertising could do. Also many companies use websites such as these to keep costs of owning a store down. However, I feel that in terms of my profession, given that I am new and not exactly established within it, keeping a distance between these parts of my life is the safest way for the time being.

I am interested to know if like Bethany who uses these social networking sites on a professional level and whether my views towards this is too strict and infact holding me back.