Branding!

Hello chums.

CPD23 thing #3 here, a smidgen late but that's just the way I roll! Or is it? Is that a comment I really want to be making in a blog written for professional purposes? Will some future potential boss Bing my name (yeah, Bing is a verb in the future, *coughs*), discover my youthful admission of poor time-management skills and not give me that dream job managing the Hyperspace Collection at Alpha Centauri University?

At this point I feel I should mention that I've recently been terribly, terribly busy at work doing all sorts of useful things, which is why I've neglected this blog a bit. (See future boss? I'm the sort of lady who'd temporarily shelve her own personal development just to ensure that your information environment is running smoothly, yowzer).

Futurism aside, the issue of how to present/brand yourself online is something that people in all walks of work increasingly need to consider. I say this with a touch of chagrin because, frankly, presenting myself as a coherent, useful individual in real life is something I'm still working on, surely I don't have to do it online as well? 

At the moment, my digital self doesn't present an especially unified front. I spent a while trying to map my participation in online communities and describe how they relate to and reflect on to me as an individual, but it was wordy and entirely uninteresting to anyone who isn't me (most people then). Instead, I cunningly integrated all this info into a Venn diagram! I bloody well LOVE Venn Diagrams. It shows the digital pies my digital fingers are in, and how I view them in terms of professional/personal content.  

Facebook is a thing apart - I don't 'Friend' any work colleagues until I'm really, really sure they can handle pictures of me doing the macarena while dressed as a space zombie. The other three I use for more career-related activities, though I like to think I maintain the same level of professionalism (which I don't consider to be mutually inclusive with formality, by the way) between them all.  

Conclusions for this Thing: I could definitely do more to portray myself evenly online, particularly in those areas where the personal and professional overlap. I'm not sure I'll go so far as to ensure that everything is impeccably branded and visually seamless (at least until I meet someone who can digitally craft a repeating wallpaper pattern out of a picture of my face), but I'm going to at least make sure that my digital profiles signpost each other. Less fragmentation can only be a good thing, even if it does mean being more honest ;)