Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

June 29, 2011 Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

Image via Wikipedia

I have not been looking forward to Thing 3. My personal brand is something that I know I should be more aware of , but as yet haven’t defined. It’s all kind of a jumble at the moment, and while I know I need to sort it out, part of me just wants to get the stuff out there!

Ways in which I might be discovered

If you Google me, nothing happens. Well, nothing related to me. Apparently I am a black American actress and comedian. ‘Fraid not. Even the facebook profile and twitter account which appear are not mine!

Who am I again?

I did discover that simply by adding ‘RHUL’ to the end of the query, that something relevant happens. All entries are related to either repositories, or my creative writing degree. Good stuff.

So I can possibly be found on Google. The reason for this being so sparse is mostly because although I am no stranger to the online world, I have always used a pseudonym – partly for this reason. Of course, if you google that all hell breaks loose, but there’s no need for that right now!

I do have a twitter account (_kimguin), but again this is under a pseudonym – a nickname from university. And this is where I think my ‘professional brand’ most falls down. I have read a number of entries on this topic which suggest that I really ought to be keeping professional and personal separate. For those of you unfortunate enough to be following me on twitter, you will know that this is not the case. I think this is due to the way that I use twitter. My impetus was not to share with other librarians my thoughts and opinions, as at the moment I feel that they would be rather limited! Rather, I use twitter to keep myself up to date and to communicate with those that I know (and some that I don’t) on all sorts of topics. I don’t aim to be misleading with this, but considering this Thing has made me wonder whether I should reconsider my use/segregate personal and professional. Of course, there wouldn’t be a lot of professional until I felt myself more established.
I hear a lot about employers googling employees before deciding what they think of them, and so I feel I ought to keep an eye on this incase I render msyelf unemployable! But I don’t think I’m particularly radical in any of my views, and I try to be on my ‘best behaviour’ online, so I am careful in some respects.

My twitter profile has a picture of me, and I took a long time choosing it. I wanted it to be friendly, ‘approachable’ and normal – a shot of me doing something which I actually do, not a studio shot or staff profile headshot in which I am being told how to smile. I think that this lends a personal touch to my profile, and as it’s not in all seriousness (yet!), I feel that this is the right message to send.

I’m considering adding a photograph here, but again am taking my time. I have to qualms about using a different photograph – even if this is inconsistent – as the picture quality here can be a lot better than on the twitter app on my iphone so I can get away with something nicer!

So in summary, I am in the process of defining my personal online brand. I have a lot of plates to spin at the moment, what with old accounts which need checking/deleting, and new ones to brand with How I Would Like To Be Seen Now.

So in the spirit of this, how do I come across? I welcome any and all opinions on the appearance of this blog, my usernames, my boring tweets and my photographs. And also, would you look someone up on twitter before working with them and how would this affect your opinion of them?

Tags: Brand, cpd23, Facebook, Google, Online Communities, thing 3, Twitter

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