Searching for an alternative to 'personal brand'

For some time now I have been struggling with the term 'personal brand'. In presentations I give on building a professional online presence, the concept of 'brand' filters in, within the context of making a mark and standing out from the crowd. It is important to consider connectedness between professional profiles on the social networks and websites we create to share our writing, portfolios, work, achievements etc. Having a username and photo that is recognised is important as is a consistent bio. To some degree a consistent style can be helpful to others to visually link one profile to another. Is this distinctiveness branding? 

define: Brand
Noun: A type of product manufactured by a company under a particular name. Verb: Mark with a branding iron.

 

Here's my definition: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer. 

A brand's value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.

An excerpt from Seth Godin's blog post on the definition of brand  


Godin associates brand with a product or service. It could be argued that as professionals we may provide a service of some description or indeed a product, but as an Educator it doesn't sit comfortably with me. I reached out to my connections on Twitter to get some thoughts.

@suebecks How about Personal Marques?
— David Eddy (@sonofedd) September 28, 2013

I did immediately warm to the idea of personal marque and yet when I looked at the definition for this it still has close links with brand...

define: Marque

A brand of a manufactured product, especially a model of motor car 

Kirsty offered professional identity and this was echoed by Brianne when I asked the question of my LinkedIn connections. Chrissi suggested profile and Barbara value proposition. 

@suebecks @timbuckteeth professional identity better? Brand has connotations, fake
— KirstieC (@kirstie_C) September 28, 2013

What are your thoughts? The importance of developing our professional online identities are clear. How we refer to this, at least for myself is cloudy. I welcome your suggestions!

HEA Computing Seminar: Professional Online Presence

This week I attended and presented at a seminar led by Dr Thomas Lancaster (@DrLancaster) at Birmingham City University. This was the second in a series supported by the Higher Education Academy. I was invited to present when I met Thomas at the STEM HEA Conference. Also there, was Mark Ratcliffe, HEA Discipline Lead for Computing.

The day commenced with a talk from David While on professional development with a focus on what academics need to learn about what is happening in schools. What skills will they bring in to university? Whilst ever increasingly tech savvy, are they ready to apply those social media skills in a professional context. My experience says not following numerous conversations giving guest lectures to university students on developing a professional online presence.  

Thomas then went on to provide a context for the day and proposed programme outline. His first talk was about how we should go about constructing a professional presence.

My contribution was looking at how we can develop connections using social media as part of our professional learning networks, but also looking at some things to consider in relation to the impact our digital footprint can have. 

 

Thomas went on to give a second presentation. The focus was on strategies that academics could use to add content to their blogs and social sites, increase the reach of their research, gain publicity and benefit from the wider possibilities afforded through social media.

The discussions there after were about how social media has opened new communication channels to people we may never have met, as well as opportunities to collaborate. For some the use of social media in a professional was still relatively new so having the time to raise questions and put in to practice some new skills was useful. 

Throughout the event participants tweeted using the hashtag #heaprofpres. To collate these tweets Thomas used Storify, providing a record of the event and reactions to it.