But of course, many are clamoring about how great, how powerful, how effective social media tools can be in the business setting. Revolutionary! Think about how great of a recruiting tool it can be! Game changer! And what about as an employee communications tool! Tweet, tweet, tweet! The reality is however that many more are clamoring – likely under their breath – with fear about how you, as an employer, are going to impact their usage of social media.

I had the good fortune of being in New York the other week for BlogHer, a conference dedicated to… nothing but women bloggers. Seriously! Over 3,000 women converged on New York to enthusiastically share with one another about their blogging efforts and learn a trick or two about how to be a better blogger including leveraging blogs for both personal and professional growth. One of the unique features of this particular BlogHer event was a conference track dedicated to jobs and careers for bloggers in which I participated on a panel where we discussed when blogging could possibly hurt your brand. And the question we attempted to answer was this – when there’s an (inevitable?) intersection of your personal and professional lives online, how might it impact your work?

One of the biggest things about BlogHer that left a mark on me was how there are a whole lotta bloggers out there struggling with their “personal brand” and how to be “authentic” (which is what will gain your blog an audience at the end of the day) through not only their blogs but their Twitter streams, or Facebook profiles when their employers or potential employers are likely “Googling” them as part of the employment process. And mainly, there seemed to be a lot of fear on this topic. Specific questions these bloggers asked of me ranged from…

Are employers really checking out what people say and do online? Are employers using information that they may find online about candidates and/or employees in their decision making? Can I be fired for what I say online? Can I be denied a job for what I say online? But what if what I’m blogging about is strictly personal and unrelated to what I do professionally? Do I need to separate my personal online identity and assume two identities so it doesn’t hurt me professionally? And just how do I technically separate that stuff from my professional persona? And is any of this “snooping” on the employer’s end of things legal?

There were questions. Many, many questions. And all were laden with fear. Lots and lots of fear.

Granted, this was a conference for bloggers so the level of fear was likely to be higher. But let’s take a step back and take stock in what we know about the usage of social media in general. Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released from The Nielsen Company. There’s no question about usage. But what employers may be forgetting about, or simply not even considering, is that with social media usage comes a lot of fear based in those very same questions I heard at BlogHer.

Fear comes from the unknown, which I think means simply that there’s a lack of communication in many workplaces about what’s acceptable and what’s not when it comes to social media usage. So what’s an HR pro to do? Communicate clearly, and communicate often. Have a policy on social media usage? If yes, re-review it, then communicate it. If no, develop one, quickly. Beyond this however, as an organization, you’ll have to assume a stance on your current/future workforce’s usage of social media in their personal lives and its potential indirect impact on one’s job. If you were to scroll back up, take a moment, and read through those questions again, would you know how to answer them for your workforce? Or a potential hire? Know where the fear is then get proactive about how you’d respond. There’s fear out there, but there needn’t be.