Sell Yourself!

CPD Thing 3 was to think about your personal brand:

I never really thought of myself as having a brand! But then again I never really enjoyed the whole recruitment process where you have to go out and “self yourself” either. Partially a self esteem thing I’m sure but then you get told to put your name into Google and it turns out that the top three entries are actually you... that’s scary!!! I then realised that I would probably be the only person that ever googled myself and calmed down a bit.

I liked what Jo Alcock (@joeyanne) said in the lay out for thing 3 on the cpd23 blog about having a “profersonal” presence online and I have already talked about taking this approach in an earlier post although I didn’t realise it was a buzzword at the time! I use the main social networking medias – Facebook on a personal level, Twitter on a “profersonal” level (@Lady_Libris) and a blog along the same lines and a LinkedIn page that is totally professional – that might be why I don’t look at it very often. I’m going to confess now that I am not the most die hard Librarian, I don’t live, sleep, breathe librarianship (shoot me now if you wish). I try to keep as current as I can but most of the time I am catching up on new ideas – I’m not spontaneous, I’m cautious with new technologies and new social medias and this may harm my brand.

Taking the time to think about my brand has made me head back towards LinkedIn and update my profile, having had such a busy year with management restructuring and working with staff cuts like every other local authority hasn’t left much time for focussing on my own brand but I have realised this should be a priority when thinking about future opportunities. It has also made me wonder how colleagues see me at work and other professionals when networking at conferences and on social networking sites. This is definitely something I feel should have more time devoted to it and I will try to maintain an up to date online presence which reflects my “profersonal” persona. Now that I’ve put it in writing hopefully I can stick with it!