What’s The Right Balance Between Personal and Professional Online?
This is a question I’m asked fairly regularly, but it’s also one of the hardest things to pin down: how do I balance personal stuff and business stuff online? It’s one of those things where, when you’re travelling around the internet, you can spot people who are doing it well and people doing it not so well. But it’s something we just tune into, and it’s difficult to come up with a formula to follow for ourselves.Of course, as with everything, there is no exact right or wrong (because it can’t ever be that easy, right?!). It all depends on the brand you are trying to create and how you can consistently feel comfortable showing up. It’s no good building a personal brand around you if you’re going to hate posting photos of yourself every day!In this post I’m giving you everything that I think constitutes best practice when it comes to personal/professional balance. We’re starting off with the key questions you need to ask yourself in order to get the right balance for your brand, then we’re starting on the fun bit – how to actually make that balance real in your content.So let’s dive in!
First, ask yourself these questions:
What kind of brand are you trying to be?
It’s so obvious that we will often skip over this without thinking about it, but it’s crucial in setting out your boundaries. What kind of brand do you want to be, and how much is your personality and life important to that brand vision.Start with looking at how much people will need to deal with you when they buy from you. So for a coach, photographer or a workshop leader, you are the product. People need to trust you and feel that they can work with you, so you’re probably better off at the more personal end of the spectrum.If you have a shop then you of course need to focus on the products you want people to buy, but you also want people to feel like they would be comfortable coming into your shop. Similarly with makers, while your products are front and centre, knowing more about you and your process helps people understand what they’re buying into. So more of a delicate balance is required here.
What does your audience want to see?
Do I say this in every blog post? Very possibly, but it really is the crux of everything you do: create the content that your audience wants and needs. Think about your target audience. What kind of posts do they like, what blogs do they read, what are they looking for online? That’s the kind of content you need to be creating.For example, if your target audience are mothers of small children, what will they want to know about you? They’ll want to know they can trust you, that you get their struggles, that your product can solve their problems. So they will be drawn to the images of your children, they may engage with a caption all about a hell-ish morning with a toddler, they’ll read a blog post about how you overcame a struggle with teething.Similarly, if you’re a shop selling homewares, what is your target audience looking for? They want inspiration for their new home, they want to know your products are good quality, they want to trust that you’re an expert who can advise them. So they might like to see how you’ve styled your own home, your advice for choosing products, an aspirational look at the lifestyle they can buy into with you.Both these examples reveal personal things about you, but in very different ways. What you’re trying to do with your content is build trust with your target audience – work out what they need to see of you in order to build that trust.
What is the purpose of your channels?
Ok, and now time for some tough love. All too often I stumble across an Instagram account where product shots are interspersed with selfies and cocktails where the user is trying to use it as their business and personal account at the same time.If you are using your online presence for your business, then use it for your business. You can’t half arse it because people just won’t buy you – they’ll see that you’re not fully committed and won’t trust you.Balancing personal and professional is not the same as posting alternate product shots and family snaps. Anything personal you post has got to back up something professional – it has to be there in order to build your brand and build trust with your audience, not because you like it.And this isn’t just the case for Instagram, it’s across everything you do. Are you writing blog posts about family life when your target audience is technology CEOs? Are you pinning business advice when your audience come to you for recipes?Everything you produce must pass the ‘will my audience like this?’ test. That doesn’t mean you can’t blog about your kids or post pictures of cocktails – either find a way that’s relevant to your audience (and be honest about that!), or set up a personal account/blog where you can share those things.
Now, let’s put that balance into practice
Ok, the hard bit’s over. Now you know what you’re basing your personal/professional balance on, we can get to work threading it through your online presence.
Content planning
We do love a plan, don’t we? I wrote in A Defence of Mess about how my content plan is very open so I can move it around – and that’s true but whenever I move something I make sure that the balance between personal/professional and promotional/valuable is maintained. Having a content plan is crucial for seeing everything you’re going to be putting out and how it all sits together. At a glance you can get a feel for how the balance is, and whether you need to add in a little more or less personal.For Instagram you need (yes need, I can’t live without mine) a gallery planning app. There are plenty of free ones on the market and it allows you to see how all your photos look together before you post them. If you want to share an image of you in an inspirational café on holiday, then perhaps post a few more lifestyle shots between it and the last picture of you.
What goes where
While they may be exhausting, all the different channels and their features are a blessing for the personal/professional balance. Part of your content strategy is knowing what content goes where, as some channels expect more personal content than others. So, for example, you wouldn’t put a holiday snap on Pinterest – over there is pure professional and inspiration.On Instagram you can afford a little more personality, but as I said, it all depends on your audience. Instagram Stories, on the other hand, are an excellent way to inject more personality to the app. While I keep my main grid curated and beautiful, Stories is where I put my face talking to camera, pictures of my dog, the scenery on a walk. So if you think you need to show some more personality but don’t want it cluttering your feed, use Stories as an outlet.
Words vs images
Very often we correlate ‘personal content’ with ‘pictures of xyz’. But content is not just pictures. If you’re uncomfortable sharing photos of yourself or your family, or if your audience wouldn’t respond to personal images, you can always use your words to bring in your personality.This tends to be my approach. Although I post pictures of my home I don’t tend to post many of me (except my hands!), but I allow my personality to spill out in my captions and blog posts. Whether it’s being honest about a mistake or making a joke about 90s hair – my words reflect me, and tend to be more personal than my images.
Some content ideas for you
Someone on Instagram asked be about this personal/professional balance and said “I don’t want my feed to just be full of adverts”. I know it can be difficult to come up with engaging content that’s not personal, so here are a few ideas to kick you off.Behind the scenes – demonstrate your craftsmanship and grow trust in your expertise by demonstrating the work that goes into your products (@ruralkind and @christabelbalfour do this very well).Packaging – generate some desire and aspiration by offering sneak peaks at your beautifully wrapped products or folds of tissue paperInspiration in your home – do you have a gorgeously messy mood board or pin board? Is there a painting in your home that you get inspiration from? Share it!Your workspace – show us where the magic happens, particularly if it’s creatively messy or particularly interiors goalsUse Generated Content – if you’re struggling for time to create content, encourage your customers to share their images of your product. You can thereby use their personal story in your marketing, and get some social proof too
Have you been struggling to find a personal/professional balance in your content?
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