Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

As I mentioned last year, I still find the idea of a personal brand very strange and to be honest not something that I am entirely comfortable with. That said, after seeing all the great blog designs of other CPD23-ers in Thing 2, I really do need to spruce up this blog a bit. If you see a few changes over the next month, then it is because I will be experimenting with the layout. Any comments about what works and what doesn’t would be gratefully received!

As for my online presence, it has changed a little from last year, but that is mainly down to two things – the fact that I joined Twitter last year (as part of CPD23), and also because I entered some running events last year, one of which I raised money for. I searched on two different browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox, though mainly on Google. I didn’t notice much of a difference in results across the browsers. My Twitter account was the third hit on Google, following by my JustGiving page at five. I was mentioned five times on the second page – running event results, my JustGiving event page, sponsoring a friend, and two tweets. The other results I found were again running events and mentions on other Twitter pages. I should add that the race results relate to one 5k race, but where the results seem to be listed across multiple different websites!

I have a LinkedIn profile, but it is not publicly available due to privacy concerns. My Facebook account is kept private as my holiday snaps would probably bore the socks off anyone that happened to stumble across them! I mainly use it for personal use, although I am a member of some CILIP groups on there, and of course the CPD23 Facebook group!

So, one year on, where does this leave me? While none of the results I found for myself are detrimental, I clearly do not have a professional presence online, which I think needs to be rectified. In the spirit of CPD23 I will be trying to be more open so you may well see a picture of me at some point on this blog (or at least on my Twitter account)! I will also be adapting the style of my blog to one that reflects my personality more.

As before I am looking forward to Thing 4 to help me rediscover Twitter and actually send some more Tweets!

Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

I have to admit that I have never really considered my personal brand before, and actually find the idea of me having a brand as being a bit strange.  I have always tried not to put too much information about myself on the internet due to privacy concerns.  I do have a Facebook account but use it mainly for personal use, and have tried to make it as private as possible.  I have, however, recently joined LinkedIn (after much deliberation, again to do with privacy), but that is still not available for indexing by search engines.  That is something I may come to reconsider during this programme.

It therefore comes as no big surprise that I do not really have a web presence at all.  As well as my privacy hang-ups, I now use my married name, while my previous work was in my maiden name.  Out of curiosity, I did search with my maiden name, but most of the initial results were for other people’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.  On Yahoo! I found some references to me in my last job on page 6, but in Google and Bing, nothing came up relating to me in the first 11 pages unless I added some other search terms (such as previous employers or locations).  A search for myself on LinkedIn revealed that, at the moment, only my profile is listed so it is reassuring to know that if potential employers search, they will only find me.

So, where to go from here?  Well, the positive point about having nothing available in my married name is that I can start afresh and create my brand from scratch.  That, I think, will be a ‘work in progress’ as this programme progresses.  I did try to think of an interesting and individual name for this blog, but as it was taking so long, I thought it would be better to just pick something and try to get to grips with the ‘Things’.  I did think of some ideas, but found they were already taken when I checked on Google.  When time allows, I intend to investigate some of the features of Blogger to make my blog more interesting, but for now the basic layout will suffice.

I have yet to investigate Twitter, so I’m looking forward to Thing 4 with anticipation...