Should you separate your professional and personal twitter accounts?

To tweet or not to tweet...

Breakdown from my point of view is pretty simple. 

My age group and beyond (ahem 30 and over) mainly use twitter on business related platforms.  We don’t  lament about relationships or subtweet so our friends/enemies understand what we are saying.  We do create conversational content, but it’s usually directly related to business or it’s something personal that’s fun and lighthearted. We rarely decide to open our hearts and divulge the fact that our parents are ruining our lives on twitter.

20-something twitters...  You have gotten through your teenage years with nearly exclusive rights to twitter. No one else knew what the heck it was, much more know how to use it!  You could tell your ex-boyfriend to shove it in one tweet and cry over your college syllabus the next.

Many 20 somethings are becoming entrepreneurs and ready to take on the corporate world. This is where separating personal and social media may be necessary. 

 Let’s use photography for instance.  If I’m a potential client who has decided to follow you, a photographer, the last thing I want to see is a tweet about the fight you had with your parents or an *@!% to your last boyfriend, then two minutes later there is an update about the last wedding you photographed, I'm going to unfollow rather quickly.

Do yourself a favor. Separate. If you are in your 20’s and you still need to vent on social media or claim how much a song reminds you of someone, you may need to cut the ties a bit or move into the world of complete professionalism and provide a twitter handle that only your clients can see.  The 20 year old's are at odds with this problem because you have been tweeting now for longer than my business has been alive. You are the first generation that has to decide when it’s time to “mature” and go pro on social media. Good luck!

Teens: have a new challenge. Your twitter world has been infiltrated. The business world has figured out how twitter works. Applying for college and jobs just got a little more interesting. Where once you could express how much the despise your math teacher or hate your ex-boyfriend’s new best friends' girlfriend’s sister, you are now being held slightly more accountable.  The person holding the key to your future may decide to see how you handle yourself on social media. Is it fair? I don’t know, but it's reality.  The choice has to be made at 15 or 16 now that whatever you put out there, stays out there and for the first time in history- your angry tweets and lovey dovey romantically notions can be considered by employers. 

Just the humble opinion moi :).