Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube, Yammer, Tumblr, GroupOn…take your pick from the countless social platforms that permeate the Internet.

Some social networking platforms are in direct competition with each other, but many serve different purposes and thus complement each other.

On Facebook you can embed YouTube videos, whilst Skype now integrates with Facebook. And you can also set LinkedIn up to receive tweets. All part of one big happy social media family.

Business vs. pleasure: the boundaries blur

With the Internet nearing ubiquity and smartphones everywhere, the boundaries between business and pleasure are starting to blur. You’re likely to have friends and business acquaintances as ‘friends’ on Facebook, and on Twitter you’re likely to be following – or be followed by – friends, strangers, businesses and professionals from across all walks of life.

This coming-together of different worlds means people have to really think about how they manage their online activity.

Privacy matters

Firstly, there’s the obvious problem of having business contacts stumble upon very private information. You can’t always control what your ‘friends’ put on Facebook, they may tag photos of you on your stag do – images that you really, really wish they had deleted forever, never mind share with the social world. When business meets pleasure, it really is best not to get caught with your trousers down – literally.

And you may be surprised to discover that Facebook actually has quite sophisticated privacy settings – you can pick or choose what people can and can’t view. So if you want to be friends with your mum on Facebook but don’t want her seeing your tagged photographs, you can arrange this.

Similarly, if one of your clients has ‘friended’ you on Facebook, you can also control what they can and can’t see. How do you do this? Simple: log-in to Facebook, click on ‘Account’>’Privacy Settings’>’Customise Settings’ and then select the drop-down boxes next to each option. So you can hand-pick who sees what on your profile.

But privacy is only one element of the social media management process. Using your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your own advantage means setting them up in the right way so that you can network and communicate as effectively as possible.

Facebook: switching between business and pleasure

It has often been said that Facebook is for ‘friends’ rather than business, but nothing could be further from the truth. Major brands, such as Starbucks, Coke, Oreo and Dr. Pepper all receive many more visits to their respective Facebook pages than to their websites. Twenty times more, in Starbucks’ case.

But if you’re in charge of a company Facebook page, switching between your personal pages and the business page continuously can be time consuming if you don’t know how to do it.

You’ll be pleased to know, however, that it actually isn’t all that difficult and you don’t have to log-in/out repeatedly. Whilst logged-in to your personal Facebook profile, any company page you have admin rights to can be accessed by simply going to ‘Account’>’Use Facebook as Page’ and then you ‘Switch’ to whichever page you wish to access.

All information you access from when you switch will be relevant to that page only, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally sending work-related information to friends and family. And to switch back to your personal profile simply click the link that says ‘Use Facebook as <yourname>’.

Twitter: getting the basics right

Twitter is a different beast altogether. It’s fair to say that most people don’t use Twitter to organise drinks in the pub with their friends. People typically use Twitter to network with businesses, fans (if you’re a celebrity) or share information.

You should give your Twitter profile as much personality as possible – personalise it, use your photo or company logo in the appropriate place. And rather than using the Twitter-designed background wallpapers, upload your own graphic as the background image.

When setting up your Twitter profile, there are character restrictions in place so use the space wisely. You have 160 characters (including spaces) to play with in the ‘biography’ section, so there’s no time for jokes or being clever. Stick to the salient facts about your company – what you are, what you do and try and find space to throw one or two impressive stats in there. You have a separate field available for your website address, so don’t waste space up with links in your biography.

This is merely the starting point for giving yourself a public image on Twitter. Who you choose to follow on Twitter, how often you tweet, what you tweet and how you generally engage with the Twitter-sphere is another story altogether. You can organise a group Twitter chat, for example, which is an excellent way of engaging with the social sphere.

You may have multiple Twitter profiles – for example if you work for a social media agency, or if you have separate feeds for different departments in your company. Throw Facebook into the mix, and having multiple laptops strewn across your desk each logged into a separate account starts to make sense.

Luckily, such expense or hassle is not required. There are many (free) tools at your disposal which aggregate your various social platforms so you essentially operate from within one environment.

Social media aggregators

Hootsuite is an excellent tools for managing your personal pages across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, MySpace (remember that?), FourSquare and Mixi. You can seamlessly shift between business and leisure networking and monitor all the activity across your personal social sphere.

So whilst it’s clear that ‘personal’ and ‘business’ are closer than ever thanks to social media, there is either in-built functionality or additional tools at your disposal to help manage any potential crossover. This should help your personal and business networking no-end.