I have to admit personal brand is not something I've thought too much about in the past. I've been trying to decide why this may be. I think it is mainly due to the fact that I have only recently started to actively use Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc - places where a considered personal brand can be constructed and demonstrated through profiles, names and visual aspects etc.
I tend to use Twitter/Facebook etc for work/professional (interest) related reasons anyway; to keep up-to-date with what is happening in library/information/archives/museum sectors, at local. regional and national levels. As such, I have never used a nickname or anthing like that; I have always used my full name, first/last name, intitials, or a combination. This could be more consistaent, however, and in future I think I will try to inlcude both my first name and surname, as this may be more easily identifiable. The one thing did feel the need to change over a year ago, was my email address. When I constructed my first email address, I was a young teen, and this was reflected in the address! I decided to go for something more grown-up - initials and surname.
My visual brand (not that I really have one yet), is something I would like to consider more. I'm starting to get to grips with the technical aspects of blogs; I just chose a basic template to begin with, but I think I'll start to experiment a bit more. I'll try to continue this across to other online profiles etc too, and when I decide to get business cards, I'll consider the visual side of my personal brand. I have included a photograph on this blog, though I generally don't enjoy putting my photograph online! The photograph I chose for this blog was one that I had recently send to accompany a short article based on my MA Librarianship dissertation, and so there is some continuity there already.
After considering my personal brand for a bit, I did a Google search using my first and last name - my name is not overly common, but a few other people with my name did show in the results.The first thing to show up was my name and adress on 192.com (an address website). My Twitter account came up, even though I've hardly used it so far. A link to flyer for a library event at which I'm going to be giving a presentation came up. Related to this, two links to the SINTO website were displayed in the results (a comment announcing a prize I was jointly awarded for my MA Librarianship dissertation, and a PDF version of the dissertation itself). There was also a link to the archives of a JISCMail list I'd posted a comment on previously, when seeking respondants for my dissertation questionnaire. That's about all that came up; there was nothing that I wouldn't want an employer to know about. I searched via Bing and Yahoo too, just to compare. A few of the same things came up though not as many; I added 'library' to my name, but still Google returned the most relevant results.
I am now much more aware of the whole concept of personal brands. I can see the benefits, and feel much more comfortable with the whole thing. I still have a long way to go in terms of establishing my own personal brand, but I think it is something I will think about again and develop further during the cpd23 programme.
