Thing 3: Online branding

Before reading Thing 3 I hadn't given much thought to my online presence or considered myself a brand at all so this particular exercise has been particularly interesting and it is certainly something I need to give more thought to.

I started this blog because of participating in CPD23 - it didn't take long to come up with the name (can you tell?!) and I had no worries about using my real name as I plan it to be a professional space. I'll have to see how it develops after this programme has finished, and whether it will need a change of name sometime in the future. I was pretty quick to choose a design to start with, but have now changed it to the autumn leaves design. I do see the benefit of having an easily recognisable brand that can be replicated in different areas, such as Jo's penguin and purple flowers.

My main online activity is Twitter and I tweet as DebsL72. I do not use this name anywhere else, in fact I am a firm Deborah everywhere but home! I guess I chose this because when I signed up to Twitter I was a bit unsure as to what it was all about, and thought it would be something more suited to personal than professional. In fact, after signing up I actually didn't use it for a long time, and it was only through the recommendation of Isla Kuhn that I got going with it. I now use it mainly as a professional tool, with some, but not much, life stuff thrown in. I'm certainly always conscious of what I say in a tweet, certainly as I think most people follow me because I'm a librarian and probably aren't overly interested in my home life! I think it's time for a change of username, so I'll need to think about that and tie that in with the blog.

I have a LinkedIn account, but have not really explored this fully - hopefully Thing 6 will get me on track with it.

I'm happy to use a photograph of myself, albeit a few years out of date and wearing sunglasses! I am certainly not very photogenic and it was the best of a bad lot! I'm using the same one on Twitter and this blog, so they should be easily connected, but have a different one on LinkedIn. Probably time for a new photo all round.

So, onto the Google search. Either I have an unusual surname, or I have more online presence than I thought as the first page of results were mainly about me (more likely the surname and I have my husband to thank for that!) The top result was Twitter, followed by Facebook. I only use Facebook for personal stuff, so may need to look at my settings. LinkedIn came up, as did my entry on HLISD, a CILIP biography for the Health Libraries Conference in 2008 and the presentation I gave (with Isla Kuhn) at Lilac2010. The next page had some links to my local activity. There was a Myspace entry that wasn't mine, and a couple of directory type entries (192.com) which are inaccurate.

A Sheep on Happy Hills Farm

There are a few other Deborah Lepleys  but my favourite was the owner of Happy Hills Farm in Florida, which sounds just lovely! It's a sheep farm and as so far I have not added any pictures to my blog, here is a picture of Deborah Lepley's sheep.

So, I feel I have some work still to do on Deborah Lepley the brand, and would welcome any comments.