Instagram – All Work and No Play?

Written by Acme Mag

Social media has weaved itself into every aspect of life, including our professional lives. But as social technology continues to storm into our lives at an impressive rate, it’s time to consider whether you’ve adapted your social media to suit modern expectations.

The modern professional must navigate a delicate balancing act on social media that ensures their professional life and personal life is showcased in complete harmony.

The rapid rise of Instagram has been one of the leading contributors of merging professional and personal, yet this reason starts with Facebook. Facebook launched Facebook Pages, previously known as Fan Pages over a decade ago. A key benefit of these Facebook Pages is that notifications for profiles and pages can be accessed and managed under the same login. Instagram however, is not set up in such a way and as it has risen to become a standard in marketing, it has altered the way we once used social media for professional use.

Now it’s not so simple to keep professional marketing and personal content separated, and it seems it may not be beneficial to do so. In an age of leaks, scandals and controlled content, people are craving a sense of authenticity. The question is no longer about how to keep your professional and personal lives separate on social media, it’s now about how you merge the two to ensure that you’re ticking the boxes of both categories.

Since we’ve covered the why, it’s time to get down to the knitty gritty of how.

Why do your friends and family trust you? It’s because they know you. Give clients and potential clients the same experience by sharing your life with them, giving them a chance to get to know you. Just remember to provide context to personal posts for outside audiences and to keep your content family friendly.

When combining your professional and personal life (especially on Instagram) you need to ensure that you’re not alienating the followers from your personal life. For example, if you continually post about free appraisals, you might start to notice you’re being invited to less backyard bbq’s. In all seriousness, establish how you can promote your real estate services while still pleasing the masses. This may come in the form of tips for homeowners, why a certain suburb is a must move to or interesting property statistics.

For maximum impact, try to make your professional and personal content work in harmony. In regards to visuals, this can be done by using similar colours, filters and fonts if your content has text in the image. In addition to how it looks, try to manage an even balance between professional and personal content.