Come on in the water’s lovely...

I must confess I have never understood the appeal of twitter... I can text my friends about what I had for breakfast if I want to, while Facebook lets me see what people are up to in a bit more detail and helps me keep in touch with friends who live a fair distance away.  I hear about the misguided tweets of politicians and celebrities on the radio and have decided that I’m not interested. However, I had never approached Twitter from a professional standpoint. Again, leading on from the personal branding exercise of Thing 3, it’s all about taking control of the content I choose to release to the world: I can keep my choice of cereal or the fact that I like chocolate spread on toast every now and again firmly to myself! So this week, armed with my new personal brand -induced confidence, I jumped in...

And it was ok! Through the initial recommendations from Twitter I reconnected with an old friend from Uni which got me off to a good start. She said I should think about it as being in a cafe: it’s ok to listen to other people’s conversations and even join in too. 

Taking this advice to heart, I chose a few Libraryland names to follow including my local academic library’s reader services desk (Newcastle University:  @nulibrs) so that I could see what the practical applications are when using Twitter to promote a library. It’s an active account, with retweets of topics of interest in the city and prompts to users about the Library such that day’s opening times  - I think I’d have found that really useful as an undergraduate.

I also picked out Ned Potter (@theREALwikiman) who is another active user. This week he tweeted about an article by Brian Proffit  (“Millennials aren’t so tech savvy”) that challenges conventional wisdom about the technology skills of young adults. Imagining that I was talking to Ned at a sophisticated cocktail party (rather than at home in my kitchen in the middle of the washing up), I sent a tweet to ask if this rang true with his experience in an academic library. He very kindly ignored the state of my yellow rubber gloves and replied while also forwarding the question to a colleague. Armed with new knowledge, I was able to follow up the conversation with some of my own research into the process of engaging students in information literacy training through problem based learning. 

What a result! I would never have made such swift progress through the sea of blogs and info available if I hadn’t accessed that professional network via Twitter.  I can definitely see the usefulness of this approach and I’ll be trying it again soon.

No Mother, I'm not getting a tattoo...

So, cpd thing 3 is all about personal branding, or how you appear to others on the internet.

I thought that this exercise would be hard for me: I don't always feel comfortable blowing my own trumpet and I have traditionally been rather cautious about intentionally putting my head above the internet parapet. My first instinct was to hide behind an alias and I spent quite a while thinking about what this would look like. Then I realised that the aim of thing 3 was to control how I appear to others on the internet. You can only read what I type here. If I choose to tell you that I have a weakness for jelly tots and that I cry every time I watch the Sound of Music, more fool me!

So I had a look on good old Google for yours truly. Not too bad! A search for my name was a little too vague so I added in my hometown to narrow things down a bit. Top of the list was my Linkedin profile which could do with updating, so there's a job straight away... After that we have a couple of newspaper articles about PR that I've done in my current job so hopefully that looks good. Then there are some articles about fundraising I've done for my local community both on my own and with my daughter - again they look ok too. No skeletons in the internet closet that I could see anyway, so a positive experience!

I then decided that I would like to improve the look of my blog and my email by choosing a name that would reflect where I am professionally at the moment:"beyond the training room" I am a retail trainer (and I have a training room!) but I often find that the most effective training happens "on the job" and in conversation rather than behind a desk. I also wanted to show that I am trying to expand my career horizons; that I am on a journey away from my current training room so to speak.

I'm really happy with the results and feel that I have a meaningful space to work in and to present myself in. I would never have thought about doing this before and yet it makes so much sense. I feel so much more comfortable moving into the world of Web 2 interactivity knowing that I can have confidence in my professional identity.