How to handle Multiple Professional Identities Online
Having more than one professional identity is very common. It is possible for someone to be a teacher, entrepreneur, freelancer and writer. The problem is not having many identities it is knowing how to manage it, Making sure they do not misinterpret your skills, experience and professional direction. Here is how you can maintain multiple professional identities without causing and misunderstanding.
1. Understand what each identity represents: You can begin by defining each role. Each professional identity must have a purpose, target and reason for existing. One job board can focus on your career and the other can focus on your creativity. This doesn’t mean you are pretending to be a different person it means they simply just represent different parts of your career to different audiences that care about different things.
2. Give each platform a clear purpose: You cannot just communicate anything anywhere. You have to decide what each platform is for. One platform can emphasis on your experience and career development or another one can focus on your achievements, work, projects and qualifications. What is important is all the platform’s complementing each other. Instead of doing that competing with each other. You can just post anything on your profile assign different purposes to different platforms if not it makes you look like you have no professional direction.
3. Create one central professional story: you can use many identities but there should be a common thread holding them together. Your different professional identities should not be completely unrelated. There should be skills, interest, values or expertise that hold these roles together. People should be able to understand your level, how your different roles fit together. Your job title can be different but your professional story should remain the same.
4. Keep basic information consistent: Your name, education, history, qualifications, dates, and achievements should correlate, there should not be any contradictions across different platforms. You can make your biography to suit different audiences but any factual information should remain the same. If your profiles are inconsistent it can create unnecessary doubts in your professional history. Keep your profile updated this is an integral part of managing an online professional identity.
5. Separate identity when necessary : Some times different professional activities actually need different accounts. A professional account can be useful when you need a particular audience, while a different account is needed to attract different audiences. In order to prevent unrelated content from making your profile difficult to understand you can separate these accounts. Although having multiple accounts is not always advisable because sometimes it can be too difficult to maintain
6. Use different content without becoming inconsistent: Your content must not be identical on each platform. The subject matter can change but the professional value or expertise should remain recognizable. One platform can contain very detailed information whole the other contains short summaries. The idea is to be consistent and not duplicate.
7. Control what different audiences can see: Having multiple professional identities can sometimes overlap your personal life. There should be a review of privacy settings, audience control, tagging permissions and public visibility. Eventually some professional contacts may encounter outside your professional profile. Managing your privacy should become a part of managing your professional reputation.
8. Make your profiles work together: where it is appropriate connect your professional identity. Your LinkedIn profile can refer them to your portfolio, your portfolio can identify your professional social and account and your creators profile can link to your professional websites. It creates a network of profiles than a disconnected collection of identities.
9. Regularly audit your digital preferences : search your name periodically to see what employers would see if they search up your name. Check to see it contains outdated information, contradictory information, appropriate professional work, correct websites and profiles and reflects your current career direction.
10. Don’t manufacture separate personalities: Having different professional identities doesn’t mean you should have completely different personalities. The best thing to do is to present different facts of the same person. Your roles can vary, your content can vary, while you remain authentic and your professional information remains authentic.
Conclusion
In order to manage many professional identities at once you need to be able to exercise. You don’t need to choose one identity and abandon the others. Use everything that has been mentioned here. This will allow you to demonstrate the breath of your career without making your online presence confusing.
