Week 2 - CPD23
Thing 3: Consider your personal brand
Maintaining
a consistent image – both personally and professionally reveals the nature of a
person. Moreover, it makes more sense when you are in a service-oriented profession
– like ours! People almost (always) refer to us as a Librarian and most of them
do not even know our names. Thus branding becomes important in more than one
ways. It is up to us to decide whether we would be like to be referred to as “Library
Madam” (as they call it!) or “Chinmayee Bhange”. I feel I would not mind
either, although I would be elated if they know me personally!
For the
Thing 3: Consider your personal brand, I am a bit thoughtful, since my online
presence is linked with my library’s online presence and vice-versa. Both of
them almost go together, except for the Facebook account (which I admit was
linked to my personal account earlier). I am beginning to take it easy with my
online presence as I feel; an overdose would maul the positive effect. I am
taking to the social networking and micro-blogging sites – one at a time.
Having said
that, I googled “SFIT Library” and was contented to see the results. One the
first page, the first four links were though my Institute’s website. The fifth to
eighth ones were my Library Blog (Happy, happy…), followed by Facebook account.
Let me now reflect on the things to be considered whilst creating a personal
brand.
Name Used:
As a norm, I always use my real name – Chinmayee Bhange across my personal accounts.
As for the library, it has always been “SFIT Library”.
Photograph:
I am a bit reluctant to post my personal photo on my accounts, although this
decreases the chances of identification and so I have been using Gravatar. At least my “identification type” does not change with my accounts.
Professional
/ Personal Identity: As mentioned already, I am thankful to myself for keeping
the two identities separate.
Visual
Brand: The font and the colour-combination used may vary, but I try to stick to
the main theme.
