About a week ago, someone at the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) got fired. Why? Because they sent a grumpy tweet about our current president … using one of KDOT’s official Twitter accounts.
The tweet was deleted pretty fast, the governor’s office had to send a statement to the press saying the tweet was “absolutely unacceptable,” and it hit multiple news outlets. Here’s an article about it from the Kansas City Star.
Just a guess on my part, but I’ll bet it was an accident. Very possibly, the state employee uses Twitter for work and for personal use, and forgot to switch back over to their personal account before sending the tweet.
And guess what? That can happen to us, too! In fact, it’s happened to me. A few years ago, I made a quick little video of snow coming down while walking in to work. I accidentally posted it to one of the library’s social media accounts (Facebook or Twitter, I think).
In my case, the video was pretty innocuous – just me saying “cool! Look at the snow!” Whew!
Don’t want that to happen to you? Here are some tips to keep work and personal social media accounts separate:
- Be nice on the Internet. Not really a tip about separating work and personal accounts. But it is one that will keep you out of hot water if/when you make one of those accidental posts.
- Log out after the post. Keep your default social media account your personal one. When it’s time to post as your library, log in, make your post, then log back out.
- Use different apps. Sometimes, you might be able to use different apps for work and personal. Not always the case, but it’s worth a try.
- Use separate devices. See if you can get a dedicated work phone or tablet, and only post work stuff from that device.
- Use different browsers. On a desktop, use different browsers for work and personal. For example, I use Chrome for personal stuff, and Firefox for library logins.
- Go back and repeat #1.
If you DO have both work and personal social media tools on your personal phone (i.e., I use one Instagram account for both work and personal, one Tweetbot account for both, etc), double check where you are posting BEFORE you post.
I know … sounds pretty simple. But accidents happen. A little review never hurt anyone … and it might help you keep that job.