People try to separate their business and personal content online by, for example, creating separate business and personal twitter accounts or blogs. However, their business followers easily find their personal content and vice versa. In fact, they seek it.   

Even on platforms where users decide who sees their content, this is true. On Facebook, I would feel bad if I declined a friend request from a business associate…and I get them all the time.  Also, I am going to link to my friends on  Linked In.

The people on my Dell team dedicated to our Dell technical community, delltechcenter.com, have given up on this fiction. They constantly talk about their personal interests with their business followers and often on the same channels/accounts. Doing this, has made them much more effective because it creates better connections with customers.

Should we just make it easier on our followers and combine our channels for social and business content? 

In the long run, we’ll be judged on the quality of our online content across business and personal.