thing 3: my personal brand

(photo by phil elverum used with no permission whatsoever)

this isn't something that i've really thought about before, to be honest. my online brand, if you want to call it that, is completely inconsistent. if you google my name you get a wide range of stuff, none of which is anything to do with libraries.

names

a lot of my online branding is music related. i used to make music under the name 'jam on bread' (BUY MY ALBUM PLEASE) so i have a twitter account under that name. if you google my real name you get a number of reviews praising my music for being inoffensively mediocre. on lisnpn i'm using the name 'steve' (dead original, like), on linked in i'm 'stephen carlton' and on facebook i'm 'steve carlton'. i have no idea where the catabloggin name came from, but i already regret it. i dread the day when i have to introduce myself by saying 'oh hi, i'm steve/stephen carlton, i do that catabloggin blog that everyone seems to be going nuts for'.

i should probably try and make things less all over the placey, but i'm not sure how to go about it, really. i want to use twitter more for professional type stuff, but i can't be doing with the hassle of maintaining two separate twitter accounts with two different personas. i think it'd be confusing if i started tweeting library people with the @jamonbreadyay twitter account though. i'll think about it.

photo

i don't think i have any photos of me where i look smart and professional. i have different photos across the different online presences i have. my lisnpn photo is my graduation photo, which is creeping people out a bit i think. i WILL change this at some point soon. i'll try and get someone to take a nice, sensible portrait of me at a time when i a) don't have dead greasy hair and b) am not pulling a weird face.

task list

i'm gonna set myself a list of things that i need to do to fix my online brand here i think. here's what i'm going to change!

• make some kind of decision about the whole twitter issue
• change the photos i use in various places so that i could potentially be recognised at networking events and such like
• have more things written about me than the baseball player steve carlton. he's taking up pretty much the whole first ten pages of google results, aside from my twitter, a couple of the aforementioned damning with faint praise music reviews, and a couple of things i've written about bands in the past. like this and this. cringe.
• get some business cards made! my flatmate is a freelance front end developer (whatever that is) and he had some printed and it was great. he entered loads of them into competitions you can do at restaurants when you give them your business card and he got a tenner off a swanky chinese meal. i'd have no-one to give my business cards to but i'd feel more professional and i might get discounted chinese food.

i think that's probably enough for this thing, innit? i posted on lisnpn for some advice today and i got some very helpful responses. thanks people who replied! thanks!