Thing 11: Your Professional Brand

The options presented in this Thing work better for me than the Thing 10 options of Twitter and Facebook. Newsworthy updates from my workplace are infrequently positive. I doubt I would attract much of a following with a stream of

Cut another journal subscription today.

Small victory! Admin finally agrees big physics class bad market 

for #infolit outreach, stops calling me "lazy."

As geographically isolated library, really should fund prof travel for entry level hires.  

No, ORCID and LinkedIn are clearly superior platforms for my circumstances. It took a bit of work earlier this year to add my complete list of Library Journal book reviews to my ORCID  profile (imports from RefWorks kept failing, so I finally resorted to a BibTeX converter), but with that wrapped up, adding new ones as I publish them is quick and painless. I never thought about adding a biography before, but that, too, was easy to construct. It's now visible at profile 0000-0003-4677-0046.

My LinkedIn presence is minimal right now, but I can see it’s another platform worthy of tending. A couple of hours over a few weekends should suffice to flesh out the content, and then I can turn to adding contacts. A profile photograph will pose a challenge, however. I really liked the way my unruly mane grew back after my craniotomy, and I’ve been striving to maintain the look ever since. Unfortunately, my stylist retired, and it has been difficult finding someone else to replicate her work. Last year’s headshot will have to serve until the next successful haircut.