Doing the Social

A curious thing has happened over the past few years - With the emergence of social networking like Twitter and Facebook, our business and personal lives have been merging as never before.  Sometimes this is fun, because some folks want to learn more about who they buy from as people.  Other times, it's unwanted or uninteresting...  The guy who wants to follow our pipe business updates only is not going to be interested in hearing what movie I watched last night.  When I initially set up our Facebook and Twitter accounts, I did so without much thought, setting them up as "myself", and I treat them both (My personal Facebook profile and my Twitter account) pretty darned informally.  This means that over the past couple of years, followers of our accounts have gotten to see vacation photos, movie reviews, random ranting, and a whole lot of other non-pipe-related posting. 

I am now offering an optional escape from this.  For a while now, I have had a Facebook business page set up as different from my own - Talbert Pipes on Facebook.  This account is ALL business, and that's where I post things like workshop news, previews of coming pipes, sketches, etc.  This way, the people who are interested in the pipe business can "Like" and follow our business page and be spared from my personal account updates on things like the new Godzilla movie. 

The same alternative has now come to Twitter.  I've just set up a dedicated business account, Talbert Pipes on Twitter, to use exclusively for pipe business.  Anyone who has been frustrated that my personal Tweets have usually been inane and non-pipe-related should hie themselves hence and follow that account rather than mine, because in future that Talbert Pipes account will mirror our Facebook biz account in sharing workshop news, site update notices, previews, and so forth.  My personal account will remain as random and bizarre as always. 

Finally, there is another little addition coming soon.  I've been reviewing a lot of movies for a private forum for some time now, and inspired by my buddy ZG, I'm going to carry some of those reviews over into my own personal movie review blog...  Sort of a "Pipe Guy's Eye on the Movies".  I think many pipe folks would say they have a unique perspective on things, and maybe some of that will carry over and help it be something more than yet another movie review blog.  Probably not, but one can hope.  Look for more news on this as it develops!