Two Facebook, or not two Facebook? That is the question

When I started working as a Rabbi in 2009, there were a number of decisions that I had to make: Would I be Rabbi Danny or Rabbi Burkeman? Would I wear a suit every day? And would I set up a professional Facebook account?

According to Facebook guidelines, a person is only supposed to have one account; yet I was aware of a number of rabbinic colleagues who were maintaining a personal and professional account. After much deliberation, I decided that I would set up a second professional account. And so in the world of Facebook, I existed as two different people: Danny Burkeman and R Danny Burkeman.

There were a number of reasons behind my decision. I was concerned about having my entire personal life on display to everyone.  Not out of fear of what people would find on my page, but rather because I wished to maintain a degree of privacy for my family and myself. I was also conscious that on occasions, my friends have been known to write posts that are intended to be funny, but may sometimes be perceived by others as inappropriate. I also knew that many of my personal Facebook friends would be uninterested in all of my Judaism-related posts, and I wondered if it was better to have another avenue for sharing these (ultimately Twitter has become that means).

It was complicated and resulted in quite a few missteps. I would post comments to the wrong account, send friend requests from the wrong account, and I would often neglect one account at the expense of the other. Yet at the end of the day, I appreciated that I could have a public rabbinic persona while maintaining some semblance of online privacy.

But there were challenges. What was I supposed to do with Jewish colleagues who were simultaneously friends and people with whom I shared a professional connection? Where was I supposed to direct the congregants who became friends? And how was I to decide what to post on which account?

So now, five years into my life as a rabbi, I have decided to return to my roots with a singular Facebook account. The process is not easy, as Facebook has no system for merging two accounts I shouldn’t really have had in the first place (I’m happy to share my experiences if you’re in a similar situation); but it is something that I want to do, and something I have been leaning towards for the last few years.

Three events have moved me to this position. The first was leaving my first community in London to come to Port Washington. My congregants were no longer congregants, and over our time in London, many had become friends. In my new situation, as their former Rabbi, I felt unsure about where they now belonged in my Facebook world. Then, when my daughter was born, I wanted to share photos and updates with everybody. I am blessed with a community who were very supportive of us during that time, and who were excited to greet our new arrival. Many of my posts belonged in both accounts, but with the pressures of a newborn it was increasingly challenging to keep both accounts as updated as I wanted.

But the final impetus for merging the accounts, and leaving R Danny Burkeman behind, is a project I am currently involved in called the #ElulMitzvahChallenge. I wanted to make sure that this campaign got the most exposure possible. Having realized that my personal and professional networks had become intertwined over the years, I could not imagine posting this on one account and not the other; it belonged on both pages. And more than this, it was a reminder that in many ways, the division between the personal and the professional had become artificial.

As a Rabbi I have come to understand that I am (at least to a limited extent) a public figure, and Facebook is another medium for engaging with the community and sharing my Torah. We need to recognize that it is another tool in our arsenal, and as such we have to decide how to use that tool. The challenge for all of us in ‘public’ positions is how can we share our authentic selves with our communities while also maintaining our private lives for the sake of our families and ourselves. In this way Facebook may be more than just a tool; it can also be a gauge for measuring what we are willing to share online, what we prefer to save for our offline community, and what we keep just for our families.

So as complicated, and at times as irritating as it has been, I have now reached the stage where I have dispensed with my dual Facebook identity. In my Facebook world I am now just Danny Burkeman – in fact one could say that I am now no longer “two-faced(booked).”

 

Rabbi Danny Burkeman is a Rabbi at The Community Synagogue in Port Washington, New York.  He has been an important influence in helping his previous and current congregations' online presence through Twitter and Facebook, among others.  He launched #elulmitzvahchallange this fall, which has inspired hundreds of people across the world to video and share their mitzvot.

 

 

Learning to Like Facebook

 

“How do you get people to ‘like’ you?” is not usually a question of much concern to a group of academics, but that’s exactly the challenge we took on when our team at American Jewish University’s Graduate Center for Education endeavored to create a new communications channel to expand our online community of alumni, students, colleagues and friends through Facebook this year. Without a communications department or dedicated staffer to build our social media presence, it’s been hard to consistently lean in to our Facebook ambitions without getting carpal tunnel. That being said, we’ve come away from Darim’s Social Media Boot Camp for Educators with some great strategies for managing and promoting the page, with the valued input of our fantastic coach Debra Askanase:

1) Develop and implement a content calendar.

2) Keep experimenting with different kinds of content, and check the analytics regularly to monitor what the fans want.

3) Based on #2, we discovered that our fans love and share photos, videos and announcements of awards the most.

4) Post regularly and consistently to keep up the flow of traffic.

5) Don’t feel sheepish about buying likes (which we haven’t tried yet).

While we are proud of what we have developed so far, a challenge is that there are members of our community missing out on our shiny new vehicle for sharing content, good and welfare and relevant education news and links. Not all of our constituents (alumni and Jewish education professionals) are on Facebook. Not everyone who is on Facebook uses Facebook for professional interests. Not everyone who is on Facebook checks Facebook. And so on.  We are still wondering: how many of our constituents use Facebook for really engaging with professional content?

Personally, I entered Darim’s Boot Camp committed to a pretty solid boundary between the personal and professional when it came to Facebook, resisting the invitations to post professional content and reserving my Facebook use for sharing photos of my kids with actual friends and (and viewing photos of their kids). Now I’m kvelling over the latest accomplishments of our students and alumni, sharing education news items and op-eds of interest, reflecting on the teachers who have inspired me, and posting photos of my students and campus, all with a couple of quick clicks on the Pages Manager app on my droid.  My new use of Facebook has become a vehicle for work/life integration in surprising ways.

So after a few months of work, the Graduate Center for Education’s Facebook page now bears the unique stamp of our learning community and the personalities and professional interests of the faculty leadership. We discovered that Facebook is a medium that can easily convey our institutional culture of intellectual curiosity, passion for creative education, sincere caring for members of our community and deep appreciation for the hard work and commitment of educators. We can be serious and playful in one space.

We’re a boutique graduate school of education, and we take a lot of pride in the warm and nurturing yet rigorous and professional learning culture that defines the “in-person” experience of being an AJU student. With the help of the Darim Social Media Boot Camp, we have slowly begun to transmit that culture online through our Facebook presence. Our next step is to share the love with an ever-growing circle of fans! You don’t have to be an AJU affiliate to join; anyone passionate about Jewish education can “like” us at www.facebook.com/educationmasters.AJU.

 

Dr. Miriam Heller Stern is Dean of the Graduate Center for Education at American Jewish University. Follow her on twitter @mirhstern. The Graduate Center for Education participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

Navigating the Personal/Professional Line Online

The New York Times’ assistant managing editor, Craig Whitney, is responsible for overseeing the paper’s journalistic standards. As Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools have changed the face of communications, he recently issued policies for New York Times reporters governing their personal use of social networks. As Patrico Robles writes on econsultancy.com:

“Employees have more influence on the image of the companies they work for than ever before. And with social media and online PR being so important these days, that trend is likely to continue.”

Whitney from the Times believes that these services “can be remarkably useful reporting tools“, but clearly also recognizes their potential impact on how the public views the quality or impartiality of the professional reporting.

I am often asked how these concerns apply to Jewish organizations. One Rabbi told me, for example, that he is often “befriended” by teens in his congregation on Facebook. Thank G-d! Our teens want to be Facebook friends with the Rabbi? Wonderful. But, he told me, he has a personal and professional obligation to take action if he sees inappropriate things on that teen’s Facebook profile, for example, a photo of a 16 year old with a beer bottle in his hand.

This particular Rabbi has developed an informal but consistent policy, which goes something like this: I would love to be your Facebook friend, but I have a responsibility to say something if I see inapprorpiate things you’re doing. Thus, I’ll leave it up to you if you want to give me full access to your profile, limited access, or withdraw your invitation. He reports many give limited access, and some withdraw their invite, but the conversation itself builds stronger relationships, gives an opportunity to talk about ethics and responsibility, and also gives him the chance to extend an invitation for the teens to talk to him privately about more serious things.

Another congregation I’m working with is investing energy in developing their Facebook Page. The staff person who manages the page wanted to provide transparency — including some personal information to make her “real” and not “institutional”, but didn’t want to have to edit her personal life on Facebook because of the professional transparency. Thus, she created a separate profile for her synagogue role, and manages all her synagogue relationships with the casualness of Facebook, but without impinging on her personal life.

Personally, I’ve recently split my personal and professional lives on Twitter, for many reasons. I’ve established @DarimOnline for my professional self (other Darim staff also contribute), where we share tips and news and links. I encourage people I know professionally to follow this both for the content and to see how an organization can use Twitter to further its work. Many people I know professionally also follow me @LisaColton on Twitter, which I welcome, and think is useful to see how people use it on a personal level. However, they know to expect updates about my social life, children and commentary on my lunch, among other things!

What issues have arisen for you in managing the line between your personal and professional lives online? What are you comfortable with, and not comfortable with? What policies or strategies have you developed (informally or formally) to navigate this new territory?

Baltimore Jewish Leaders Assembly, Powered by Teens

Allison Fine signs copies of her book, Momentum
Allison Fine signs copies of her book, Momentum

Allison Fine, author of Momentum was the keynote speaker at ACHARAI, the Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Development Institute’s “Technology: Threat or Promise” event on Thursday, November 20. After setting the stage to help participants see the landscape of the field, Allison pointed to the group of teens seated at the back tables. These people are the future employees, and consumers of what our Jewish organizations have to offer. Allison urged us to listen to them, carefully. How are they using these tools, how are they making decisions, what do they want? The bottom line: communities are no longer being built from the top down, they are powered from the bottom up. We must empower and engage these young people to bring them into our community and organizations.

These teens came to the program to both learn and teach. One of the several break out sessions, led by Darim’s Director of the Learning Network, Caren Levine, employed the teens to help participants get hands-on experience with social media tools, such as wikis and blogs. The teens were able to help lower barriers to entry, so participants could experiment with the technology in a safe and supportive place.

Teens debrief at the end of the day
Teens debrief at the end of the day

While the teens were instrumental in assisting the program, I think they walked away with more than they expected. Those who attended my session on social media theory and practice told me they had many “ah-ha moments” — that while they don’t think twice about the technology, they’d never paused to think about how it can be used strategically to help achieve a specific goal, and they were excited to see examples of really fun stuff happening online in the Jewish world.

Hats off to Debs Weinberg and her team for organizing such a thoughtful, educational and inspiring event. In my vision, the next stage of Jewish organizational life will fuse experienced strategic thinkers with younger “we’ve grown up on this stuff” staff to shift organizational practice into relevant 21st century modes. These young people may have walked in thinking they were contributing to the teaching, but they left with much more. Sitting in on the debrief after the conference, I was amazed to hear what they had learned. The skills they developed in this one day will position them to be incredibly valuable in the job market as they graduate in the coming years.