Are you on Facebook? Only four years ago, this simple question would have been a hot topic among professional communicators. Today, it has become a rather obsolete ice-breaker as we ought to ask an entirely different question: “who are you on Facebook?” As a matter of fact, professionals who spend a significant part of their job engaged in communication often maintain simultaneous profiles on multiple social media outlets, covering different aspects of their online existences. Many of them create a number of entirely separate online selves to take on different strategic roles and to freely communicate with their audiences. For example, one might engage in conversations with customers on an eye-to-eye level, another might share company news with colleagues and industry communities, and yet another ‘self’ might advertise personal milestones and musings to a small circle of friends. Such a conscious and diversified impression management not only allows for a playful and safe experimentation with different audiences and communication styles, it also helps bridge our professional, semi-professional and private communities and thus opens up unexpected brain pools and creativity. The question remains: how can we harness our multiple selves to the advantage of our communication teams?
