CPD23 Thing 3: Branding myself

Part I – My brand
  
I let a couple of days pass since Thing 3 went up on the cpd23 blog and, in the meantime, I had a look at what other people were saying about their personal brand. The thing that struck me most was the exercise mentioned by Tina in Tina’s Library Related Stuff: define your brand in six words. Come on – I told myself - six words, it can’t be difficult! Well, I have been thinking about it for three days now, and haven’t come up with ANYTHING, so I will be using this post (and your patience) for a bit of self-brainstorming.

Honesty...down-to-earth...action...living not surviving... libraries and information...expat / Italian / living in a foreign Country...

Oh! They are six, although they are a nice mess! Let’s try to turn them into adjectives:

Honest down-to-earth motivated Italian librarian.

What do you think? I’m not sure it says everything there is to say about me, and I might get rid of “honest”, not because I’m dishonest (!!!) but because something like “keen” or “passionate about my work” might give a better idea of what I was trying to say.

The idea of having a personal brand is appealing, and when I started this blog I did put some efforts into it. I never thought about expanding the style to the other online platforms I’m on (Twitter and LinkedIn) but I’m definitely going to personalise them too now.

The blurb I wrote for the “This is me” section in Blogger contains a professional statement but also loads of non-library related interests: this is because I like the “profersonal approach” Jo mentioned and I don’t think that showing just one side of the story is fair. I’m a complex person, and I aim to be well-rounded; moreover, if you meet me in person, you want to be prepared – if you expect a very serious, quiet, peaceful and slightly boring librarian you might be very disappointed! ;-)

To answer some more points mentioned in Thing 3:

• Name: don’t worry, I’m not giving you another lecture on my name (!), I’ll just say that I like to keep my maiden name even if this complicates things, and that I chose Maria Giovanna In Other Words (mginotherwords) because I really wanted to give justice to my first full name. I’m also @mginotherwords on Twitter and it seems to be working well. I need to add a reference to it on LinkedIn too. MG is actually my first real English nickname and I quite like it. Nice and short, plus tied with the English habit of using loads of acronyms.
• Photograph: miraculously, I happen to love the one I’ve got at the moment – it’s a self-portrait I shot in San Sebastian (Basque Country, Spain) last April. I don’t love my photos generally, so I hope my face won’t be changing much because I want to keep this one for as long as possible. The pink / lilac coat is one of my favourites. And there’s also the sea in the background, which I love.
• Visual brand: I guess I’ll need to go pink / lilac everywhere! It’s one of my favourite colours and although I try to change it every now and then (with good resolutions along the lines of “this year I’m not buying anything with that colour!”), I never manage to get rid of it, so I’ll just embrace it for good.

Part 2: what does Google say about me?

Google UK:
"Maria Giovanna De Simone": 8/10 on the first page is me; LinkedIn first, then the guest post about cpd23 on Tame The Web, Facebook, the CILIP East of England committee, my blog, my husband’s page on the college website (where he says that he is married to “a humanist with negligible inclination to science”...!), and a link to Tame The Web again. Good.
“Maria G. De Simone” brings up Twitter and links it to mginotherwords. The rest is not me.
“Maria Giovanna De Simone” library: 10/10 on the first page is me – great.

Google Italia:
“Maria Giovanna De Simone”: 8/10 again. Something I did for the National Archives of Florence back in 2005, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tame The Web, an article for an Italian newspaper, and the work for the National Archives again. The funny thing is that the second entry is about a hairdresser, and number 8 is about a pizza-maker. Unfortunately I am neither able to put my hair together decently, nor make a pizza. ;-)

So, results and actions after the vanity check: 1) change my name on my Twitter account 2) write something in Italian too. I have promised a couple of Italian cpd23-ers I would write in Italian, so you see, I really have to do it now.

Part 3: Feedback!

If you managed to get to the end of this huge blurb, now it’s your turn to let me know what you think. Too pink, too personal? Or about right? If you only know me via this blog, what impression do you gather?
Feel free to fire...I look forward to reading your comments!