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
- 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
- Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation
- 9 Free Tools To Monitor Your Online Presence
Don’t have a personal brand? Or haven’t thought about it? Start here:
- Your Virtual Brand
- What’s Your Personal Brand?
- LinkedIn: Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell You, But Was Too Shy/Modest/Embarrassed to Say… by G. Kim Dority
- Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand
- HOW TO RUIN (OR BUILD) YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
- 10 Ways Personal Branding Can Save You From Getting Fired
- Personal Branding 102: How to Communicate & Maintain Your Brand
- Personal branding in the age of Google
- The Social Media Style Guide: 8 Steps to Creating a Brand Persona
- Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation
- Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online (part 2)
- The corporate brand is cramping my personal brand!
Librarian by Day 
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