The article below is a good reminder for all of us who are embracing social media sites for our business uses. In fact, Tague is going to be making some changes to our Facebook group and push more into our Fan site rather using the normal Facebook Friends setup that we have currently. Read Jill Bremer's post from LinkedIn for some helpful insights.

Jill Bremer

Owner, Principal at Bremer Communications

FACEBOOK ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS

The lines are blurring between personal and business personas on interactive social media. Many business professionals started using LinkedIn for their business relationships and reserved Facebook for their personal connections. Now, FB is being used more and more by businesses to establish a presence and build new professional contacts and FB users are melding their personal and work-related contacts together. Here are some tips for building and maintaining a helpful – not harmful – online presence.

1.Think carefully about who you want as your FB friends. If you count business colleagues, direct reports, or bosses among your “friends”, you won’t want to post status reports that reveal too much about your personal life. You shouldn’t talk about your runs down the ski slopes when you’re supposed to be home with the swine flu!

2.Check your privacy settings; you can control who sees what info about you. For instance, the groups you’ve joined can be very revealing to viewers of your profile. You do want to offer professional contacts a reasonable glance into what makes you “you”, but beware of revealing too much about the Big 3 (politics, religion, sex).

3.Consider creating different lists of friends on FB – one personal, one professional – and set different privacy restrictions for each. Read more at http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

4.Make your profile photo a professional one or something that is neutral. Refrain from pix in costume, in something revealing, or holding drinks or smokes.

5.Keep a tight reign on the photos in which you’re tagged. And have the courtesy not to tag others in photos that would embarrass them.

6.Avoid posting your answers to online quizzes. Professional contacts don’t need to see which “Lord of the Rings” character is most like you. And they probably don’t want to be invited to take that same quiz