Should Crypto Professionals Separate Their Personal & Professional Instagram Accounts? - Episode 6

Ty Smith0:05

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Coinbound podcast. Today we are talking about separating your personal and professional Instagram accounts. Should you or should you not? With me is Kylie, who joined us, what was it, a few months ago now? Three months ago? Two months ago?

Kylie0:21

Two months ago.

Ty Smith0:22

Okay, somewhere like that. And one of the reasons we hired her was her experience with social media, particularly Instagram. And TJ, what's the nickname we had for you? TJ Take 'Em to the Shed?

TJ0:31

Take 'em to the woodshed? Yeah, we're not rolling with that anymore. But yeah, I'm here. What's up?

Ty Smith0:36

All right. So, what do you guys think? Should you separate a personal and professional Instagram account? Because I've been going back and forth on this for a while.

TJ0:43

So, it's a question of what's better?

Ty Smith0:45

Well, I mean, we're not talking about separating a personal account from a brand account. We have Coinbound's Instagram account, that's not what I mean. But what I mean is I have, so I have a personal Instagram account, and then I have ty_coinbound, which is sort of my professional stuff where I only talk about crypto-related things. And the reason behind that was kind of I wanted to separate it from my high school friends and college friends and stuff like that because they don't care about crypto.

TJ1:12

Right. So, my gut short answer is yes.

Ty Smith1:15

Yes, you should separate them?

TJ1:16

My gut short answer is yes.

Ty Smith1:18

Yes, you should separate them?

TJ1:19

My gut, short answer is yes.

Ty Smith1:21

Yes, you should separate them?

TJ1:23

Yes to either one. Depends on what your motivation is. It depends on what you're trying to use it for. So, if you're trying to use it for exposure, does it make sense to start a new one? Not necessarily, unless you've got the bandwidth and can totally offload it and you don't have to touch it. I think it makes sense to roll, personally what I believe in is rolling whatever you're doing in your personal life. So, if you're starting a new business, that would roll into your personal page. But, if you don't want people to know what you're doing, then separate them. But, if you start a new one, just know almost nobody's going to see what you're doing for probably at least a year.

Ty Smith1:52

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, Kylie, you have a, you have a couple. You have, you have Crypto Kylie now, you have a personal one, and then you have...

Kylie2:00

My thrifting, yeah.

Ty Smith2:01

And thrifting. All right, so what is thrifting, by the way? Is it just buying used clothes, is that sort of...

Kylie2:06

Yeah, going to the thrift store and it's, I don't know, hunting for second-hand items. I consider thrifting, for me, I encompass it in second-hand, it doesn't really matter. But, I use my different Instagram accounts because I have different interests, and not everyone that follows me has the same interest, same as what you were saying. I personally, like TJ said, it depends. When your business and your brand is you, like you're a blogger or you're an influencer, it makes sense to have your personal and your work together because you are your company and your brand. But, when you work for a company and you want to have very specific, tailored content going out to your audience, it makes sense to separate personal and business.

TJ3:07

Yeah, I think she hit the nail on the head with what she was saying with tailored content. It's just going to depend on the type of content you're going to be putting on the channel. So, if you're talking about starting a separate Instagram that has to do with entrepreneur and business type stuff, and you're specifically planning to create tailored content for that channel, then yeah, I think it does make sense to start another, you know, Coinbound CEO type page where you're putting entrepreneurial type content. But, if it's still just going to be your personal life or your personal Instagram more or less, I think it makes more sense to put that on the page that you've already spent time building an audience for. So, I think that's right. It just depends on the audience you're trying to build and how much content you're really trying to get out there, and if you have a plan for the content or not.

Ty Smith3:55

Yeah, my kind of issue is that a lot, since we're a marketing agency, a lot of what we do is sort of like self-promotional and stuff like that. That's not necessarily stuff I want my home friends to see, and I don't want to bother them with that. So, I kind of thought if I'm going to post this on my personal page, I'm going to kind of be a little more reserved than I would be with a dedicated account. But, the issue I ran into there was that I don't spend a lot of time on Instagram in general. So, it was enough work to just update my personal one, and then my professional one, and then Coinbound's, and stuff like that. It was just, it was not like a good account because I didn't have enough content to post on it, and then I didn't want to repost things over and over again. So, I am moving in the direction of sort of merging it all to one, but I'm still not, I'm still not 100% sold on it being the right move or not.

TJ4:49

I think that makes the most sense to me, and then taking the content that you said you would, you know, would feel maybe like spamming to your personal stuff and posting that to like just the Coinbound business Instagram, and then you mix yours in with personal stuff and some Coinbound stuff. When we're out at events, when we're meeting people, like all that stuff's applicable, but you don't necessarily have to post about Coinbound on your personal page every day. And like you said, if you created a separate one, then you would feel like you had to post consistent content that relates to you and Coinbound, but you're probably, unless you're specifically planning to create some, like this type of content or podcast or whatever, then it's going to be hard to generate enough to really fill it out, I feel like.

Ty Smith5:31

Yeah, I also, I mean another part that played a factor in that decision was that I think people want to do business with people that they know and sort of see the personality behind, and my personal account, I've had, when did Instagram get popular, 2013? I'd say I joined 2013, I have no idea, I'm just guessing. So, I have content all the way from back then, and that's not stuff that I'm going to repost then on a new professional account. So, I don't know, I just, I think you kind of have to merge some sort of, whether you have a separate personal and professional account, I think you definitely need a personal element to a professional account is what I'm getting at.

TJ6:06

100%, I agree.

Kylie6:08

Yeah. When I started the thrifting account, I did it because I didn't want to bother people with my outfit pics constantly, yeah. And the things that I say on my thrifting Instagram is not something I would say on my normal Instagram because my followers on my personal don't care about where I bought my clothes or, my philosophical beliefs behind what I'm doing. But, what I found is a lot of my friends have found my thrifting account and followed and are interested, and I do post some of the same stuff on my personal and my thrifting account. But, what I like about it is you get to decide who you are on that platform, and I can be Kylie Goes Thrifting and be like my thrifting self and talk to people who are, have similar interests and beliefs. And it's cool because you write the rules of your own page. You post what you want, when you want, what you think is appropriate for what you're trying to accomplish. So, the pressure behind posting on your personal and professional, I think you should forget about that and do, first of all, for your personal, just do whatever you want personally, and then professionally, obviously, make the content that you think is appropriate. But, I don't know, I like having separate Instagrams. I love it because I love Instagram. But, I feel like I accomplish more on multiple platforms.

Ty Smith7:48

I do feel like a lot of people are starting to separate them more and more. And yeah, I could see that being the move if you have the time to populate both accounts. I kind of, part of my decision was also the fact that like I'm not trying to be an influencer or anything like that, and you guys both have accounts that are related to Coinbound's accounts, so I kind of felt a little less pressure to, I guess, build up my own when two other people in the organization had their own. Also, another thing, I was kind of concerned about if I did merge them, like how permanent it would be. And Instagram's actually really good for this because you can let people, or make people unfollow you, and it doesn't notify them. So, let's say this week I started following a bunch of crypto accounts and they started following me back, if at some point I wanted to re-separate it, my personal, I could just go down my follower list and then have them unfollow you.

Kylie8:49

You just block them and unblock them.

Ty Smith8:51

Yeah, but it's not like blocking where they can't see it, they just won't be following you anymore, and then you could set your account to private. So, I think that's a positive with Instagram.

Kylie8:59

And you can also archive photos, too. So, let's say you started posting a bunch of crypto stuff and you decided I want to keep this personal page personal, you can just archive that photo, which means you're not deleting it, you're just hiding it from everybody else. And let's say you changed your mind three weeks later and decided, no, I really do want that stuff up because I don't want to have two separate Instagrams, you unarchive it.

Ty Smith9:21

Really? I did not know this.

Kylie9:27

So, yeah, it's a popular thing amongst people who break up a lot, you know.

Ty Smith9:30

Break up a lot?

Kylie9:32

Yeah, like you...

Ty Smith9:33

Like relationship breakups?

Kylie9:35

Yeah, like let's say you're on and off, you have an on and off relationship. Yeah, you archive the photos and then when you get back together, you unarchive them.

Ty Smith9:44

Okay, I did not know Instagram was so breakup friendly.

Kylie9:47

Yeah, Instagram knows its audience and they are trying to do whatever they can to make our lives easier.

TJ9:53

That's a good point. And another good use for that would be kind of like what you were talking about. Say you wanted to convert your personal page to use for business purposes now, but it's from 2013 and maybe there's some stuff from five years ago that you don't necessarily want everybody to see. You could archive, use this as a more professional page, and then if you decided at any point you didn't want to, you just come back and unarchive them. Or, I think you even brought up another point, making your personal page private is a whole another option. And it just, again, comes back to the discussion of what is your purpose or what is it you really want to use it for. If you're using it to try to get your brand and message to as many people as possible, obviously, you wouldn't want to have it be a private account. But, if you're using it just to interact with your friends and family and show them what you're up to, then making yourself private is also an option.

Ty Smith10:41

Okay, so the general consensus here is separate them, is what I'm getting?

TJ10:45

My answer is there's no wrong answer. You can do it either way, just depends on what your end goal is. For you, I would say, I say put them together, but you know...

Ty Smith10:55

You have one account or you have multiple accounts?

TJ10:57

I have one. The only one I'm aware of is Young Dumb Crypto. I've got another personal one that I don't post on very often. Same kind of thing, I just use it to hold @s, like right now I've got @meetbitcoin on there, so that's what it's called. It's not really my name, but I do have a personal one, I just haven't really, I don't post on it much. But, in a perfect world, yes, I would. I would go post on that.

Kylie11:19

I think for you, probably putting them together is not a bad idea because Instagram now has a new option where you can make a private story for particular people. So, let's say you...

Ty Smith11:31

Close friends?

Kylie11:32

Yeah, you have...

Ty Smith11:33

I didn't realize how unsavvy I was on Instagram. I had no idea you could do that.

Kylie11:38

Yeah, so you can run a story for like close friends that everybody doesn't see.

TJ11:41

So, if you only want your college friends to see something, you can make a separate story for all your college friends, and they're the only ones that would see it.

Ty Smith11:51

Okay.

Kylie11:52

Yeah, so Instagram gives you so many options, and like TJ said, there's no wrong answer. You do whatever is right for yourself, like what you can handle. If you're, if you like Instagram and you want multiple platforms, like I feel like having multiple platforms has made my personal grow because people find me from Crypto Kylie and people find me from Kylie Goes Thrifting and they follow my personal account. So, that is also another option if you're trying to be more well-known. But, also at the same time, having one account, more people have to follow that one account.

TJ12:36

Well, and if you're trying to break in or build up an account in a specific niche, like she mentioned, when she made her thrifting page, or if we make a crypto page, it's much easier to get in touch with people that have that interest. And then, like you said, there might be crossover from people that have similar interests to you that would have similar personal interests. So, the cross-pollination is key. And if you're trying to build a channel within a certain niche, starting now, because it's all algorithmically based now compared to what it was a few years ago, it's much easier to get connected with people within your specific niche by starting a new page now than it would be to try to convert a page that you've had for years ago. So, there's, like you said, there's no wrong answer.

Ty Smith13:36

All right. All right, cool. I guess that is all for today. Thank you guys for tuning in. Be sure to do the three Rs: rate, review, and recommend. And thanks a lot.

TJ13:45

And follow us on Instagram.

Ty Smith13:46

Oh, yeah, let's go.

TJ13:47

Young Dumb Crypto, @coinbound, and @cryptokylie.