Tag: professional brand

Creating my professional brand

In my experience building a professional brand can be challenging but is worth the hard work…it’s like training for a never-ending marathon – but when you’re actually competing all that practice begins to pay off.

I’m relatively new to LinkedIn, having only created my own profile in the last 6 months. As I’m still building it, I haven’t had any major revelations yet, but what I’m finding tricky is knowing how appropriate connecting with casual acquaintances is. Generally, my strategy has been one of cagey reticence punctuated every now and then by rashly sending invitations to connect to dozens of people at a time, hoping dimly that doing so is normal and in fact a sign that I am a sociable, well-adjusted librarian.

I suppose I’ve been building a professional brand for longer than I’ve been on LinkedIn, having always been careful with my online presence, and conscious of the importance of connecting with other librarians through tools like my Twitter account, or through face-to-face encounters at conferences and events. Having said all that, I did the incognito search suggested for this task and found out one or two things! My Pinterest account (which doesn’t have anything suspect on it but wasn’t curated with professional endeavours in mind) was one of the first results, with images pulled from my style, recipe and (heavily populated) things I want boards! I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I’m a greedy capitalist pig…As with most apps and social media, it’s always advisable to go and check your settings to make sure they’re adjusted to your liking.

Here are the top 3 things I’ve learned about building a professional brand for library/info pros:

  1. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other librarians – I’ve had nothing but positive reinforcement from doing so. Stay behind after events and ask for contact details or Twitter handles to keep in touch and build your network.
  2. Join associations and committees and working groups if you can. This enhances your CV as well as making valuable connections.
  3. Get used to talking about yourself and your work – create a (frequently updated) doc that summarises your current projects/work/interests and tell people about these things in professional and personal settings (but maybe not in the pub!)…the more you do this, the more you refine your elevator pitch. It also helps when it comes to interviews, as you become comfortable with describing yourself and your unique selling proposition! Practice makes perfect..