Getting started on branding
The task for Rudaí23 (and, of course, the topic of this post) is your online brand. How visible am I online and am I happy with what is available? I followed Rudai23's helpful guide to viewing yourself 'incognito' online (it sounds more sleuthy than it is) and was happy enough with the photo of myself and how it ranked on Google Images (it is my LinkedIn photo - the same as the one for this blog - and it came up second, behind my namesake who is an MBA candidate in the University of Oxford) but there is little in terms of actual web presence. There is a LinkedIn option where if you follow the click, you will be presented with all the people on the site that share my name. This is not ideal, so I am currently looking at Rudai23's other suggestions (specifically aboutme, which I had never heard of before).LinkedIn: more than just your online CV
The suggestions regarding LinkedIn were the most revealing. I am generally ambivalent regarding LinkedIn: I occasionally tidy up my page (usually when I see a profile of somebody else that is particularly well done) but as I'm not actively seeking a job at the moment, it's low down on my list of priorities. Rudai23 reminded me that LinkedIn isn't (just) a place for you to have your CV available to potential employers, but (yet another) place where you can interact with your peers in the library world. And if you're interacting with your peers, you should probably have an up-to-date CV with all the relevant information and details. Two points which really struck home with me: I need to have a summary and a headline (interestingly, this article suggests that your summary is the most important part of your LinkedIn profile). That's what I'm going to be doing for the next hour or so on a Saturday afternoon (although I do have Radio 6 to keep me company). For the future, I aim to connect in a more substantial way on LinkedIn.
Discovering my brand
So, what's my brand? Bar my photo, I don't really have one. While that may be seen as a negative, I guess you could look at it in a more positive light, in that it could be seen as a blank slate. I have been told by a certain person that I need to find my 'niche' in the library world, and it might just be that my niche and my brand might be the same thing. One of my interests in my professional life is how libraries reach out to users and how users interact with their library. I guess my niche will be to get experience in this, and my brand will be to market this as something that is associated with me.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI like that link you put in regarding how to best use LinkedIn, it's a useful guide. If you've set up an about.me page for yourself, maybe you could put a link to it in a comment below?
The Rudai23 Team
Hi Wayne, thanks for your comment. I am in the process of setting up my aboutme page, but I'm having issues with the size of my photo (the one that I used here and on Twitter is very blurry on such a large screen) but once I resolve that issue, I will post here.
ReplyDelete