CPD23 Thing 3

Branding Doesn't Have to Be Painful

I will admit that I was not looking forward to this thing. I hate the idea of the personal brand and the whole elevator speech. But I felt that what was being presented in this thing made a lot of sense.

I did the Google Search and given my rather unusual name everything that came up was for me. And most of it was professional -- there is some extra-curricular activity as I am a long-time board member with a social justice group. I don't go around promoting my involvement at work but I don't hide it either. I was pleased that my Facebook did not show up as I have that pretty tightly locked down. I do tend to mix professional and personal with more emphasis on personal on FB and I will probably keep it that way.

However, this blog and my Twitter account are things that I have kept generally professional. I have only used this blog for online continuing education and I have tended to use my Twitter account only for library-related tweets (although initially I set it up for my mother's benefit she never quite got the hang of it and for at least the past year or two it has been only work-related tweets).

After reading the post about branding I have been thinking about trying to make these two accounts more alike and ways to be more professional. I have tended to use my middle names and my personal email rather than my work email for these accounts but I should change that. I will work on making these accounts less anonymous and more about me as a professional librarian.

The only thing I am leery about is keeping things private but that tends to be hard to do anyhow so I'll work on a balance between private and professional. But this thing has certainly got me thinking and I'll work on developing my online professional persona more as time allows.