Photographers : One or Many Social Personalities

Question

With photography covering such a wide range of topics, it's clear that a lot of photographers are likely to face an issue when it comes to being active in social circles - You don't want to expose people who are interested in your "U" rated work to coversations where you express your liking for "18+" rated content.

So it makes sense to split up your accounts a little, or maybe a lot?

Do any of you ( ON A PERSONAL LEVEL ) simply split yourself into 2 ( Regular & NSFW ), do any of you split your personal interstes further ( Sport . Erotic . Falmily Portrait ), or do any of you dare to use one single account ( Anything goes ).

I'm particularly interested in how you how to split up regular content if it could be deemed as NSFW in a non pornographic way. For example, an interest in modelling which is non nude, but contains gore or fictional graphic violence. This makes it not suitable for family viewing, but it's not going to appeal to fans of the erotic either. So should you have 3 presences ( Universal / Regualar / NSFW )?

In other words:

So lets say as a photographer you own several web/business presences:

Your Name Photography - Fashion, Family Portrait, Local, Street
FA Media - Alternative, Dark, Music, Live Events, Light Fetish
Dark Eye Promotions - Main Fetish - BDSM
The Erotic Studios - Nude - Erotic

From a business perspective, you should own each of these as a site and a social media account, but on a personal level, how do you keep up with all interests without needing to set up another 4 mirror accounts for personal use?

Any examples of how multi-niche photographers out there run their personal presences would be appreciated.

Answer 1

So lets say as a photographer you own several web/business presences...From a business perspective, you should own each of these as a site and a social media account, but on a personal level, how do you keep up with all interests without needing to set up another 4 mirror accounts for personal use?

So, here's where you need a paradigm shift. As a photographer, you aren't 'the business'. You can't hide behind it like an employee at Walmart or Chase - it's only you. Because of this, there is no longer a separation of personal and business, as there would be for a bank teller, for example.

Instead, you have social media presence(s) that you use to promote your photography business, and vise-versa - in fact they are all business. The only way to keep things completely separate would be to use a pseudonym for your business profiles and your real name for personal, but then make sure you never post a single thing on your personal site that would allow someone to think you're a photographer. Sounds challenging, huh?

No, instead, most people bite that bullet. You create separate media presences and interact accordingly. Your "personal" site no longer gets as much love, unless it gets rolled into one of your brands (say, family photography). You can be careful to not expose your NSFW work on your personal, or do - it's your choice. But realize that it's not a "personal" site at that point - it's a marketing tool. Accordingly, you'll lose people that don't want to engage with the new content you're posting, plain and simple.

There are business level social media tools out there that help you consolidate accounts into a dashboard for easy posting and replying - so managing multiple accounts doesn't become too big an issue.

TLDR; Marketing is about targeting the right segment of people. A family portrait that overlaps with NSFW is a business-killingly small niche. Instead, keep.them.separate.