In the old days you may have slightly exaggerated your CV or embellished a few truths about your career - now it seems we all have two identities?

I love social media! Facebook? I'm never off it according to the current Mrs Bennett! Twitter? I check it several times a day and even more if we happen to be training overseas. It's important to keep up with the news and current affairs when you run a media training company after all. LinkedIn? Great networking tool - like Facebook but for grown ups however, there is an interesting pattern emerging  and I'm as guilty as the next person for having two separate identities!

There is our corporate Facebook page which simply does what you would expect. This keeps our followers up to date with company business, announcements about new training courses and then occasional link to an entertaining news clip or two. At the last count we had around 100 "likes" and that's fine considering we only set the page up a few months ago. By total contrast, my "own" Facebook page which has pictures of the family, our recent wedding (on a beach in Australia), old snaps from years gone by when I earned a living as a sports presenter, radio DJ and live MC plus speedway presentation photo's going back to 1986. After my annual Facebook cull, the total number of stalkers - sorry, followers was still 700!

What that suggests is that most people still view Facebook as a site to spy on your kids, look up old school mates who you haven't seen for 30 years or a place to be somebody more interesting than your professional persona. Everyone is different in the work environment as opposed to home life yet Facebook allows you to share every aspect of your private life - warts and all! In the past week. I've heard about 3 divorces, two proposals and a deceased cat. . . and if truth be told, out of the 700 (make that 701!) followers, I know 50 or 60 of them. . . if that! Would we invite our personal stalkers to join our business page? Probably not and I wouldn't even begin to think of giving our clients my personal Facebook details so what I'm saying is "never the twain shall meet" . . . unless you choose to have an element of crossover.

The same applies to twitter - one for business and one for me. The people I follow on each account are very different  - News and current affairs on Media Answers, celebs and sport on my personal twitter account. It's not just me either as I've discovered during recent training sessions in the UK and overseas. Just make sure you don't mix up your accounts or status updates as saying you've had a really bad day at work when you run the company may send out the wrong message to your clients and your own staff!

So, what about you? One or two Facebook accounts? As an experiment a couple of months back, I set up a group on Facebook called "Media Answers push for 500 likes " just to prove that some people really will join any group if invited. After a week we had 271 members, yes 271 for a group that didn't actually mean anything? In the end, it produced around 75 "likes" but the point is that most people who use social networking sites don't pay that much attention to the content if the pictures are pretty, interesting or different. As for security settings in both Facebook and Twitter? Don't even get me started on that. . . . . . 

The form filling has started as we attempt to bring our company to Australia. We signed up with a very well respected agency this week, sent off a rain forest full of forms and two pints of blood so now the fun (?) really begins. . . some of the initial questions relating to our proposed business empire are interesting to say the least and perhaps, not relevant to a media training company based in the UK but the rules apply and we have to just tick the appropriate boxes. Maybe we should start a Facebook group. . . or isn't that where we came in????

Mike Bennett is the director of Media Answers limited and has worked in broadcast media since leaving school almost 125 years ago! Radio broadcaster, interviewer, TV News cameraman, sports producer, live sports arena presenter and media trainer.