If you are using social media as a part of y our marketing strategy, there’s one extremely important rule you need to keep in mind. Keep your personal and professional accounts separate. Sure, it’s tempting to just use one account for both purposes, but it’s important to resist that temptation.

Using social media as a marketing tool is all about having a personal interaction with your target audience. With that fact in mind, it might seem like a great idea to show your audience who you are by exposing them to y our personal account. Unfortunately, that idea isn’t as good in practice as it is in theory. The reality of the situation is that your friends and family aren’t necessarily going to address you in a professional manner. Sometimes they might use offensive language, or delve into controversial topics while talking to you on social media sites, and while those things are fine between friends, they don’t go over well with all members of your target audience. By having those conversations with your friends and family on the same account as your professional conversations, you run the risk of alienating some of your customers.

We’ve all done something stupid at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, for some of those stupid moments, one of your friends was on hand with a camera to capture your idiocy on film. If you’ve done something stupid that happened to get photographed, there’s a very good chance it will wind up on Facebook. Your friends will  not hesitate to tag your personal account in the photo in question, and chances are, you don’t want your customers seeing your past mistakes caught on film. If your personal account, and professional account are merged, your customers will have full access to all of the boneheaded things your friends photographed.

Facebook is a powerful marketing tool, but only if you use it correctly. It’s safe to say that merging your personal and professional accounts isn’t the right way to use it. Keep them separate, and you’ll keep your customers interested in you and your products.