Librarian by Day » Social Media

How to Monitor Your Personal Brand (For Free)

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:17:59 +0000

Yes you need to. Everyone does. Even if you’re just on Twitter, even if you’re not. You need to pay attention to what others are saying to and about you online. I know many of you do this for your library but it is important to do it for yourself too.

Why? Carie Lewis lists 5 different categories or reasons

Brand – mentions of your name, including acronyms, misspellings, etc

Current – issues that people are talking about that involve you right now

Detractors – people you know don’t like you but talk about you

Competition – people in the same space as you

Staff – prominent people in your org, like your CEO

There are some paid services out there but with some time and effort you can monitor your personal brand for free.

Step 1. Pick your RSS reader of choice, netvibes, igoogle, google reader, bloglines whatever.

Step 2. Create feeds and add to your reader or page

Use Search Twitter to create a search for your name – “bobbi newman”
Use Search Twitter to create a search for your “handle” without the @ - librarianbyday
Use Search Twitter to create a search for your blog title – “librarian by day”
Use Google Alerts to recreate the same 3 searchs
Create a Google Alerts for links to your blog

I found that the Google alerts and Twitter searches pretty well cover everything. But if you want to cover all your bases you can also create searches in:

Technorati
Blogpulse
Boardtracker – will send you emails
FriendFeed – you’ll actually have to search this manually, there doesn’t seem to be a way to set up alerts or feeds
Ice Rocket – searches the blogs, web or Twitter and provides RSS
Social Mention

Once your alerts are set up use a tool like Evernote to track your online reputation – when people say something good about you clip it with Evernote, and you have a nice collection of clips for tenure, annual review, bio padding, quotes about your awesomeness, or just to cheer you up on bad days

Additional readings

Don’t have a personal brand? Or haven’t thought about it? Start here:

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What is Social Media Now?

Bobbi Newman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:50:42 +0000

A look at what social media means now and some interesting facts and statistics

What is social media NOW?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

And the slightly saltier verision What the F**k is Social Media NOW?

found via Stephens Lighthouse

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Top Ten Links Week 21

Bobbi Newman — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:01:44 +0000

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 5/21/2010 thru 5/27/2010. Ok I’ll confess right off the bat, I cheated, there are 12 links this week. I just couldn’t cut them down. A couple of these deserve their own blog post so shame on me for not giving them the attention they deserve.

1. How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - great article from Peter Bregman with some clear reasons why you should stop multi-tasking

A study showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs.

What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

Even better are the six things he learned the week he stopped trying to multi-task. I really need to do this

First, it was delightful.
Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects
Third, my stress dropped dramatically.
Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time.
Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.
Sixth, there was no downside.

2. RT @dmlcentral The Dalai Lama taps Internet and social media to engage in rare direct conversation w/ Chinese citizens – yep the Dalai Lama used Twitter.

3. Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media – a brief article from the Pew Internet & American Life Project looking at racial differences in the use of social media.

4. 7 of My Favorite Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” – Andrew Carnegie
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” – Wayne Dyer
“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.” “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” – Gandhi
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

5. RT @kongtemplation: great interview tips for librarians from @lynnemthomas – Tips for Librarian on the job market: 4 tips from the interview stage – a must read for anyone looking for a job

Secret #1: If you have landed an interview, the search committee already believes that you are capable of doing the job as they have described it and as you have indicated on your CV and Cover letter.
Secret #2: Interviews really answer the question “am I willing to work with this particular person every day for the next 10 years?” for good and for ill, on both sides.
Secret #3: The search committee is terrified that you won’t like them, either.
Secret #4: We’re all hoping for The One. The Perfect Gig. The You-Can-Pry-My-Awesome-Job-Out-of-My-Cold-Dead-Hands connection. But mostly? Especially early in our careers, we’re looking for a job that will work pretty well for us, and the search committee is looking for someone to fill their job without making them regret their decision a year or two down the line.

6. “Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not“ (Another blog post on the topic by moi) via @zephoria

People will not leave Facebook en masse, even if a new site were to emerge. Realistically, if that were enough, they could go to MySpace or Orkut or Friendster or Tribe. But they won’t. And not just because those sites are no longer “cool.” They won’t because they’ve invested in Facebook and they’re still hoping that Facebook will get its act together. Changing services is costly, just like moving apartments or changing jobs or breaking up in general. The deeper the relationship, the harder it is to simply walk away. And the relationship that Facebook has built with many of its users is very very very deep. When transition costs are high, people work hard to change the situation so that they don’t have to transition. This is why people are complaining, this is why they are speaking up. And it’s really important that those in power listen to what it is that people are upset about. The worst thing that those in power can do is ignore what’s going on, waiting for it to go away.

7. RT @VenessaMiemis: smart piece on the meaning of privacy in an information age by @doriantaylor – a must read!

8. good convo about tweeting during presentations Twitter, tweeting and ethics via @woodsiegirl – a great discussion about using Twitter during presentations and meeting on the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CLIP) a UK-based professional organization for librarians.

9. 6 Reasons Why People Don’t Change, and What to Do About That – another great post from one of my favorite blogs. Here are the six reasons for how to overcome them read the full post

You don’t want to change.
You don’t feel courageous enough.
Your environment is holding you back.
You feel like giving up after one or three failures.
You don’t feel enough pain yet.
You don’t know how to practically make the change.

10 Why Controlling Bosses Have Unproductive Employees

…if your employees consider you a controlling person, even an unconscious thought of you can have a negative effect on their performance. If, for example, they were to happen to subliminally see, out of the corner of their eyes, your name flash for 60 milliseconds, you could expect them to start working less hard. Even if they didn’t intend to slack off.

11. yes! RT @uMCLE: Clay Shirky & Daniel Pink – a terrific conversation about TV, social networking & motivation – I’m a big fan of both of these gentleman and this is a great conversation

12. RT @zephoria: Pew Research confirms that youth care about their reputation. Report: Reputation Management and Social Media My comments:Pew Research confirms that youth care about their reputationSimilar Posts:

Social Media is the Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution

Bobbi Newman — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:28:45 +0000

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Howard Rheingold on New Literacies – Crap Detection

Bobbi Newman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:21:42 +0000

This is a long video but worth watching. Howard Rheingold talks about literacy, information literacy, digital literacy and critical thinking. One of the things that stands out to me is he borrows the term “crap detection” from Ernest Hemingway. So while he is applying it to the internet the importance of critical thinking has been around long before the internet. It is not a new skill, but rather an old skill being applies to a new medium.

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Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:38:41 +0000

CC image courtesy of Bill Gracey - Gone to Mexico on flickr

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including:

How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook?
How do we control what staff are saying online?
Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR.
We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites?
What about privacy?
We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first.
How do we know a student is who they say they are?

I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control.

The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived. So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt.

In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your customers. The things they have always been saying are now online for the whole world to see. The content and commentary they post about you may rank higher in search engines than your site or content. You can’t stop them. Every attempt you make will be like fighting the Hydra, cut off a head, two will grow back. I promise.

Prevent comments on your website? They’ll start their own blog or Twitter account or website. Implement a filter to block social networking sites? They will find a way around it (and you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face).

Stop wasting time trying to get control, you might be fooling your boss or the board or yourself, but you are not fooling your staff or more importantly your customers. Better yet, when you stop spending time trying to get control or pretending that you have it, it frees you and your time to address the real issues.

Still not ready to let go? Think about these questions from Andrew McAfee :

Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time?
If not, why not?
Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers?
Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties?
Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

Still not convinced? Or need to convince someone else? Try reading these:

*Up Next – What you can do after you’ve accepted control is an illusion.Similar Posts:

How Using The Internet Is Changing Our Brains

Bobbi Newman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:45:41 +0000

CC image used courtesy of Reigh LeBlanc on flickr

As with most things, the benefits from computers and technology is all about balance.

From an article in The Independent – What the web is teaching our brains, a list of activities and the benefits each provides.

Internet research: Boosts the ability to integrate and process information as well as enhancing decision-making skills.
General browsing: Encourages the use of continuous partial attention and multi-tasking, which can impair cognition and cause irritability
Playing computer games: May improve multi-tasking skills, memory and peripheral vision. Can lead to antisocial behaviour.
Building a blog or website: Building a blog or your own website improves frontal lobe function, reasoning and memory.
Sorting email: Boosts information-processing functions in the brain’s frontal lobe. Can also cause stress.
Using emoticons: Exercises brain centres linked to emotion and social connection; particularly beneficial to those who use computers for long periods.
Tweeting and chatrooms: Enhances peripheral attention, helps to boost self-esteem and protects the hippocampus.

The article includes more information on the “why” or how it works, and of course some negative aspects of internet & technology usage too.

Worth reading:

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Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:50:20 +0000

CC image courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

Last week I (and many others) spent a lot of time documenting the Internet Librarian conference, photos, tweets, blog posts, facebook updates. Did the act of digitally documenting the events change anything? Did the process of lifestreaming change my (and others) behavior, perception of what was happening and memories of it. Will we remember it better or worse?

A recent article from CNN Do digital diaries mess up your brain? looks at the effects of lifestreaming. Just knowing others are watching you may change the types of experiences you choose to have, from books to movies to where you eat and what you wear.

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,” he said.

It also detaches you from what’s happening at the moment. If you’re focused on tweeting what’s happening, you’re not fully engage in what’s happening.

But recording everything you do takes people out of the “here and now,” psychologists say. Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they’re doing because they are focused on the recording process, Schwartz said.

What does that do to our actual memories of events? Memories are shaky at best even when you’re completely focused. If you’re only half there, will you remember it later without the aid of digital documentation? What would I rather have a memory of something or documentation of it to prove I was there? What if that documentation goes away?

It makes me think, I do want to be living and experiencing life to the fullest. Does this mean I’ll put down the camera, the cell phone, the laptop? I don’t know. Probably not at conferences, but I’ll be thinking hard about doing it in other areas of my life. What good is lifestreaming an experience if I’m not fully enjoying it?Similar Posts:

How social media can hurt your library

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:38:49 +0000

photo by DCvision2006 on Flicrk

We’ve all seen warnings and stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of status updates or photos on social medial sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

CNN is has a new one with some social networking don’ts

1. Don’t announce interviews, raises or new jobs

2. Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer

3. Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed

First I think number 2 should include – “or coworkers”, really nothing good can come of that either. But the point I want to add for librarians (library workers) everywhere is

4. Don’t badmouth your customers.

We all get frustrated, we all have bad days, I understand that, but venting on social media sites isn’t the solution and it could cause real problems for your library. Your customers may read what you wrote, they are more tech savvy than you give them credit for. In addition to some old fashioned hurt feelings this can lead to some real problems for your library. They could complain to someone at the library, which means staff will need to spend time dealing with this issue. They could email it all their friends or maybe the newspaper, this is bad PR no library needs. Or they could just never come back, which is contradictory to the mission of libraries, and loosing patrons is never good for libraries. Libraries don’t need bad PR, especially not now when so many are facing funding cuts.

If you don’t care about how it will affect your library keep in mind your boss may read what you wrote, there are endless ways this could happen. I can’t imagine a library manager anywhere being happy that an employee is publicly badmouthing patrons. There are a wide range of outcomes depending on what was said, how the library handles custom service issues, but being fired is a possibility.

Think being anonymous will protect you? think again. Think having a private account will protect you? It might, unless there is a glitch & its made public, even briefly, or until you *friend* the wrong person.

Your best plan is not to put anything online you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see. Just don’t do it. Think twice before you post that next Facebook or Twitter update or write that next blog post.

Additional Reading

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Social Media Revolution

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:55:19 +0000

An interesting video on Social Media, is it a fad or a revolution?

Thanks to Helene for sharing thisSimilar Posts: