Could your social media use be putting your family at risk?

When I first started blogging here at Business Plus Baby I was amazed at how much personal information many parent bloggers shared about their families. Having worked in IT, I guess I was more cautious than most, but I realised early on that I would need to decide what I was happy to share and what I wasn’t.

In the end I decided to keep my family off my blog. That turned out well, because this blog is about how to work around a family rather than about having a family. So I can easily write about how having a family affects my working life without mentioning what my family is up to.

But it’s not just about your blog. It’s hard to separate business from personal on Facebook in particular and it’s not much easier on the other platforms either.

I don’t want strangers in the street knowing my children’s names or that my house is vacant because I’m on holiday. But on the other hand I promote my courses – a lot – on social media so I need to be visible and I need to show up as myself.

It can be a tough challenge if you’re a parent with a business. So to get an idea of how safe your personal data is, take this short quiz:

Of course this quiz just scratched the surface and data privacy is a lot more complex than this. But it’s a good starting point and reminder.

I scored 18, which I’m fairly happy with considering I make and promote social media training! I doubt I could promote myself effectively if I was in the ‘can’t be googled’ category.

How about you?

(Thanks to SingleHop for the quiz)