CPD23 Thing 3 - Musings The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and The Hooded Claw

Admit it, some of you remember / know the cartoon series.  We have Penelope in bright pink (only pink seems to exist in her sunshine world) and then there is the Hooded Claw (evil cackling black faceless) perpetually trying to stop her and failing.

You're now wondering what on earth this has to do with personal online brands? (CPD23 Thing 3)

Well I have a brand conflict (not that I particularly like the brand word in the first place). Or at least it's more an 'approach to personal brand conflict'. Penelope approach is very out in the open.  Claw approach is faceless and a lot more cautious.  I kind of do aspects of each but in different places for different aspects of my life.

The conflict is to do with why I'm on certain things, what I hope to convey by it, being aware of potential consequences, and a wish to frame / zone different aspects of myself into different mechanisms and maintain personal space / focus place for each main aspect of my lives - and I have many. So - let's explore that.

Why I'm On What I'm On

I probably came to social media about 2 years ago, I set up just about all my accounts at the same time, and I just do 'main' ones i.e. FB, Twitter, LinkedIn.  I set up the accounts for two objectives, one professional, one personal. 

Personal was about keeping in touch better with folk I don't see that often (some within the profession some not). Personal to my mind is FB (though a lot of my friends on it are within the profession) and a personal Twitter account that I don't advertise and has very very few folk on it with a small smattering of librarians within it, though I'm a bit alarmed to see doing the puting my name into search engines thing that it just came up!

Professional was mainly to promote blog entries I'd done on a blog I was primarily responsible for at the time as part of promoting the content across relevant weblists and beyond to members.  Which is where the other Twitter account and LinkedIn came in.  It was also about feeling I should have a 'professional' presence on them, which again linked into promoting the doing's and activities to members of the organisation I'm primarily involved in.  And wanting to see conversations relating to and be able to respond.  It really wasn't about the day job though the 'professional' Twitter account has kind of become for both.

They're all different aspects of me, even though a few people overlap on them, so I'm not fussed about having different avatars, names etc. They're supposed to be different. Equally there's a limit to how many online personalities I can cope with having. The personal Twitter and mostly personal FB, professional / work Twitter and professional / work LinkedIn seems about right, it's manageable, easy to flip between them. I've toyed with blogs, failed, and would like to revisit (yet more aspects of me!).

What I hope to convey / Consquences

My personal Twitter one I really enjoy, it's just fun, I never put anything professional on it. I get a bit conflicted if folk I know as friends and professionally want on it trying to figure out what I'm most comfortable with though. Half because I want it as a peaceful non-professional space where everything else doesn't impinge and follow me. And half because I wonder which account would they like most. So I divert people towards the professional one or find they overlap occasionally but I try and avoid that. I steer completely clear of professional on my personal Twitter and I tweet and am on it a lot, all very innocuous. Fun. 

Basically I follow the same rules for FB (i.e. keeping it non-professional) though I don't post that much or find the time to keep up with it this year and will generally accept anyone I know for it, many of whom are in the profession.

My professional Twitter I don't really weed at all, if folk want to follow me then absolutely fine that's one of the main purposes it's there for, I follow a lot less back than I did at first, but that's just to do with controlling volume of stuff to look at. I'm cautious on my professional account (on all of them actually to different degrees), I want to be there, I want to post more, but I'm very aware that I'm corporate sector which puts a lot of work stuff out of bounds and in my professional involvements again I need to be careful and think about appropriateness and reputational angles while still wanting to communicate, be seen to be there, convey some personality, be responsive etc.  So I go through phases of being 'good' and trying to tweet something regularly and periods of silence when I'm reading a lot more than tweeting. I get more out of it than I contribute professionally.

LinkedIn again is the professional sphere and I exercise very little control, if I know folk I accept them, it all tends to be professional or work (though they may also equally be friends as well as professional), and I'm on it very little other than to accept people. My profile's probably out of date come to think of it.

A zoned approach

As I say there are grey area's in this, I have a lot of people I met through my professional involvements who are also friends and 'which account' creates problems at times as I have taken the conscious decision to zone myself, different aspects of what I do streamed through different accounts / products. I don't think my professional ones hugely need to know or care if I'm eating apple pie or on a day out. If I'm harassed I don't want them to know, I want to appear calm, collected, focused etc professionally. I don't think my 'personal' ones want all the professional stuff either.  If they really do they can follow both. Otherwise my personal ones are to create space for the rest of me from my professional life which gets very all-consuming. I find it necessary to zone to keep that space in my head and I want it limited in numbers of folk and who. Semi-private.

Should I become more consistent?

I started with a a fairly clear plan of what I wanted to be on, how, and why two years ago, setting everything up at the same time helped in that, and it was a great thing to do. I love Twitter (for personal and professional). FB I really struggle to find the time for much compared to a year ago, LinkedIn I'm barely there, it's all reactive. I've tried setting up blogs or contributing to over the last couple of years, and that's been wildly erratic and never lasted more than a couple of weeks.

Ze Internet Search Engine results

Well there's a famous international food writer with the same name as me but I knew that (I've been looking at Google, Yahoo, Bing by the way). So she outdoes me a bit but that's fine, there's still a lot of me there under my actual name.  All my other identities my name is discernible from I think looking at these results. So they link in a bit more than I'd anticipated they would.

To Do List

And this is going to be Kept Very Small because I frankly don't have time to add lots more To Do lists and it would totally take the fun out of this if it all became part of the on-going juggle. It's going to be 5min chunks around the edges of main activity. But then you can actually do a fair bit in 5mins if you know what you're trying to accomplish with it!

1. I shall officially sign up for CPD23 and link this blog to it instead of skulking in the shadows (less Claw more Penelope).

2. I will (shock horror) look at all my main online profiles and actually up-date them and put a bit more information in.

3. The blog thing shall be tried again - probably through this as an initial vehicle / schedule.

4. I will judiciously add at least some of my other selves to main places where I have profiles so they're still zoned with different names and avatars and purposes, but linked in better.

5. I will read the blog on BIALL Conf presentation on using LinkedIn better.

6. I'll get back to trying to tweet a few times a week on the professional account.