Thing 3: Consider your personal brand (Part Three)

I’ve left this bit until last because I needed a good think about it: “Professional/personal identity – do you want to merge the two or do you prefer to keep them separate?” I’m going to try and keep it short, honest, and hopefully useful.

I can mostly get on ok with the idea of a ‘branded’ identity in terms of a background image, consistent style and something that represents you as a person. I do it out of a desire for things to look nice, recognisable, and be easy to navigate. I’m ok with the idea that this is fluid, and it’s relatively easy to change things if you feel your ‘image’ no longer fits how you feel as an individual or doesn’t work with what you’re doing within your profession. I do, however, have problems with the idea of branding as an individual in terms of an online communicative presence. Identity is a changeable thing from moment to moment. The thought of trying to create a fixed identity through what I choose to say/not say at all is problematic for me, let alone the sense that I should create a fixed and marketable/profitable/pleasing one. It’s not really something I’m keen to devote time to because I don’t think it’s something I can or should control. I don’t try to do a professional/personal split, it’s false and impossible. Professional is personal for me, I’m ok with that, and it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if employers/whoever don’t like my online presence. I’d probably have an issue if it became relevant. I dunno. I’d still tell em where to shove it.

Having had a read of How To Ruin (Or Build) Your Personal Brand, had a little sick and collected myself again, I think I can say that some of these things I do, not deliberately, just because I am a me and although I’m changeable in many ways I’m consistent in others (the way I write and to a degree my tone). I engage because I have an understanding of how social media works. I network because I’m a social critter and I just can’t help it. I’m intellectually generous because I’m a librarian.*

Some things in the article I do almost deliberately sometimes as a direct ‘screw this’ against ‘branding’ or trying to be appealing. That’s not to say I don’t already consciously/subconsciously alter my behaviour dependent on my surroundings – just as I do offline. Then again, I can be a cantankerous thing and only occasionally do I think “hmm, maybe I should post this later after editing when I’m calmer”. It’s not just out of being difficult, though; I’m a touch choleric to say the least. I don’t calm down when I’ve had time to absorb something. When I read something that bothers me enough to pass comment, I tend to channel all the bothered into dissecting something and responding to it in a fairly rational way (I think. I hope). If I go back later, I get worse. I go back and edit my post and add unconstructive elements. So in posting spontaneously, or writing and then scheduling the post to be published at a more social time of day, I may well come across pretty…well, angry…(I’d rather think of it as ‘passionate’) but I think it’d be really boring if I wrote about things in a style and form that calmly stated how things are tough and here are things from all the angles. And, frankly, it’d be disingenuous. And if I didn’t get mad I’d get sad, and a depressed Lauren is not a productive campaigny Lauren.

Maybe things will change as my situation changes, but I’ll certainly be very reluctant to be anything other than ‘myself’ online. I’m in a good position to do this though; my job is totally unrelated to the campaign work I do, I’m going back to uni to do a PhD soon (fingers crossed) and the point of being a campaigner is to be Angry As Hell at The Man and tell people about it. I hope I manage it ok. And I’m more than happy for people to tell me if they think I’m a dick. It doesn’t mean I’ll listen, but at least I’ll know. So do comment away!

* Someone recommended I shouldn’t put scripts/presentations for lectures and talks online because I could make money from them or use them again somewhere else). I can’t in good conscience do that because of the subject area, for a start.

Thing 3: Consider your personal brand (Part Two)

Part One was about visual consistency and images – Part Two is about my name and my face!

What’s In a Name?

Unf. <3

I share my birthday with Ellen Page. We were born in the year of the opening of the Docklands Light Railway, the third term of Thatcher’s government and the extinction of the Dusky Seaside Sparrow. This makes me an almost-digital native. I’ve been using the internet regularly for more than half of my life (argh!), and that necessitates a username or two. Unfortunately, pre-teen me wasn’t the greatest at picking timeless, supercool usernames, and as I got older of course my interests and personality changed, as did my usernames. I was always a sensible girl and never used my real name in case somebody tracked me down and killed me or something, and I still don’t tend to use my name, although the reasons are less to do with a fear of scary people:

1) My surname is Smith. Only people with this or a similarly common surname will understand how frustrating it is to not to be the first one to discover that twitter exists and snap up your name. It’s even more frustrating when they don’t use the account. I’m looking at you, other Lauren Smith…

2) I’m getting married soon. The only thing I have with my full name on in the URL is my blog. I’d not been able to decide for a long time what to do with my surname, because I’m a Fierce Independent Woman and all that, but then, all the relationship-stuff aside, Carney is a well better surname than Smith so it’s a good opportunity to snap up some account names, right? And then I got published in a couple of journals and newspapers and things, and I don’t really want the faff of having to swap my name around on everything professional as well as personal. The bank account, passport, driver’s license etc. is going to be enough of a faff as it is. I’ve had a chat with a few married female academic colleagues, and it turns out they’ve kept their maiden name for academic things and use their married name everywhere else. It sounds like a good idea, not to mention easier, so I think that’s my plan for campaigning, PhD and work stuff.

3) I like the idea that a username can say something about you that your real name doesn’t, with minimal effort on your part and before someone’s even had a look at your about me. When I chose walkyouhome as a twitter name and subsequently all other things library-related, I did it in a very conscious (and fairly lame) way – I literally scrolled through my itunes and wrote a list song titles that might do the trick, then picked some favourites and signed up for the first that wasn’t already taken. Never heard of The Features? Do yourself a favour and get yourself an earful of some Tennessee indie rock.

As unromantic as the selection of my username was, people have said some pretty nice things about it, like it sounds friendly, kind, caring and approachable. I’d like to think people think that of me as a person, so the username seems to be doing the job. It’s also a good conversation-starter!

Never Forget a Face…

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to plaster my mug all over my accounts, so I used to use little pictures that looked vaguely like me, like this one:

But then, when I ended up with my face on national news, I figured there wasn’t much point in hiding anymore…

The Blue Period. Comeback anticipated post-October 2011 so parents don't cry at wedding photos.

…and actually it would probably be useful if people could actually recognise me. Faces are kind of useful like that. So now I’ve got a consistent mug-shot across everything regardless of function, from linkedin (vaguely professional, not that I ever really use it) to tumblr (mostly retumbling Dr. Who pictures).

Hi!

Google-Time

At this point I must admit that I don’t tend to google myself; I go one step worse/further – I actually have a google alert set up for the query “lauren smith” AND libraries. I get a daily email letting me know when Google’s found something relating to the search. A lot of the time it’s to do with Lauren Smith the British swimmer, but often it does bring news articles and other things to my attention that I’d otherwise miss, that I can then add to the list of stuff that I’ve done/been mentioned in. As yet I’m not sure what purpose it serves, but I’m fairly confident it’ll be useful one day (for something other than showing the grandkids hopefully!). At the moment when you google my name it’s got my blog as the top hit, which means I must be doing something right. If you search for “lauren smith” libraries it’s fairly solidly stuff relating to me up until about page nine, including my linkedin, blog, a Guardian article I wrote, some interviews and an Audioboo recording of an interview I did. Erk. There’s nothing too horrendous there, although to be honest I’d have no idea how to get rid of it if there was

Thing 3: Consider your personal brand (Part One)

I think I’m going to break this down into a couple of posts because it’s got the potential to be quite hefty. In Part One I’m going to look at Appearances: themes, layouts, backgrounds. That sort of thing. Whenever I think about this I end up swapping loads of stuff around which takes time in itself, so I expect today will involve a lot of tinkering!

Accidentally-on-Purpose

In terms of fonts and layouts, obviously you’re limited when you use the free versions of anything, but I tend to stick to the same font family because I’m fussy, and the same kind of layout because anything complicated gets annoying. I thought I’d try something a bit different for this blog as a change, but to be honest I’m not right taken on it so I may well change back to something more familiar soon…

Having a consistent theme across platforms is something that I’ve tried to do ever since having more than one social media account. It wasn’t so much to do with a ‘brand’ in the sense of the ‘marketing yourself’ kind of way (because that makes me do a sick in my mouth), and more a personal desire to have a consistent appearance to the stuff I use. For about two years I’ve used this as the background to my work and home computers, twitter, tumblr, blog etc, and my flavors.me account (which is really useful in itself to keep everything together in one place and with one theme):

'Bookshelf' by Colin Thompson.

I even have it as a gelaskin on my little netbookylaptopthing to stop it from getting scratched. I think it does a fairly good job of presenting me as a person. Imagine if my twitter account was actually me. I’d be wearing this as a dress.

Disintegration

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself altering backgrounds in a weird, half-subconscious kind of rebellion against consistency, and my work, and what I’m trying to say about myself. Must be summer-induced Wanderlust. And to be honest…I’m a bit bored of the bookshelves! I’ve also started to find it a little bit problematic because don’t get me wrong, I love a good book, but so much of what I do is about promoting libraries as being so much more than just books, so I think, if I’m going to have a background that’s trying to say something about me as a professional, it’s not the right image. And, I’m probably not trying to say something about myself as a professional, so perhaps an image I like says enough about me. At the moment on twitter it’s a leafy wallpaper thing, on flavors it’s a dandelion clock (which in itself probably speaks volumes about where my head is professionally…) – it’s all a bit of a jumble of Stuff What I Like, which I suppose only screams ‘Lauren’ if you know me.

Reintegration

Having a bit of a think about my ‘brand’ for this post has reminded me that people probably do need a degree of consistency, so I ought to make my mind up quick-smart and come up with a consistent background again! I just found this by the same illustrator of the bookshelves, and we can pretend it’s all symbolic and stuff:

'Doors' by Colin Thompson

So yes, I’m now off to go and swap everything about