Monitoring my personal brand on the web

This post is part of 23 Things for Professional Development.

Here is the result of my Google vanity search:I included extra search terms as my names are too common to use alone, and mostly return hits about the eponymous Olympic diver (definitely not me!).Good news though, all these hits are relevant: my LinkedIn profile, a SCONUL Focus article I co-wrote, a profile of my library within the Oxford University libraries directory and my Twitter account.

However, my blog isn’t there, though a search for “Laura Wilkinson librarian” does find it (8th hit).  My blog is the main site I would want people to find if they were searching for me.

I don’t think there is anything about me on the results page that I wouldn’t want a potential colleague/employer finding out about me, as I hope I wouldn’t put anything like that on the open web to start with.

I have used the same photo of myself on my Twitter, blog and LinkedIn sites to help keep my personal brand consistent.
I could improve my personal brand by changing my name to something unique.  I started to search for name generators and found some pretty dodgy sites, including this one which creates a whole false identity for you. Perhaps I’ll stick with who I am, and try to improve my search engine optimisation, hence all the self-referential links in this post!

Time for innovation

I have recently subscribed to Freakonomics Radio, and their recent podcast about “Reading, Rockets, and ‘Rithmetic” started me thinking.

The theme was about how you motivate people and groups to innovate, and mentioned Google’s 20 percent time, “a program where Google engineers spend one-fifth of their work hours on their own pet projects”.

I love the idea of being given work time specifically to try out new ideas.  Instead of holding a 60-minute brainstorming meeting with 20 attendees, costing 20 person-hours, why not give individuals ring-fenced time for trying out new ideas?  I’m not sure libraries and other workplaces are ready for this yet, but I feel excited at the possibility of a day a week, or one week in five to do something creative and different.

This is an idea to keep in reserve and look out for future opportunities to make it happen…

Risk, failure and success

Today, Google announced that they are discontinuing support for Google Wave.  Much of the reaction on the internet has been of the “I always knew it wouldn’t work” or “it has been a total failure” variety.

I would like to offer a different view.  I am really glad that Google tried something out, and when it didn’t have the success they might have hoped for, they made a public statement that they were not continuing the service any more.

I like this for several reasons.

1. If we only carried out projects where success were assured, we would rarely innovate or improve.
2. Any new technology is bound to become less relevant (or, at worst, obsolete) eventually.  I would not consider a typewriter a failure just because I don’t use one now.  Perhaps some people have benefitted from Google Wave during its short existence.
3. Being honest about the status of the service is to be commended, rather than just letting it slip away and hoping people won’t notice.  Other examples include where an author or administrator lets you know that a blog or website is no longer being updated.  Much of the existing content may be useful, so it’s good to leave the site up, but also useful to know that links won’t be checked, and the information may go out of date.  I did this on my previous blog, OxfordStaffDev, which still gets traffic.

Scout badges: a measure of success

Coming back to the idea of failure, I would like to explore the difference between a true failure and a lack of success.  I don’t intend this to sound like a difference in wording for the sake of political correctness.  I believe that a failed project is one where all the necessary resources were in place, but someone or a group of people did not step up and contribute what was necessary for the task to work.  Compare that with a project for which everyone did what they could to make it work, but for some unforeseeable reason, it wasn’t as successful as intended.

FourSquare badges - a different measure of success

I would like to encourage a culture in libraries of taking risks with trying out ideas which are not guaranteed to succeed, but for which all reasonable risks have been managed and taken into account.  This is especially true for ventures into social media.  This summer, I am involved in running the 23 Things Summer Camp session on strategy.  In these sessions, I work with the group to explore the various social media avenues that different libraries could explore, and what might go wrong.  The most frequent worry is “what if someone posts a negative comment on our Facebook page?”.  My response is that our library users have opinions about our service that we rarely pick up via surveys or other tools.  Having a space where we can respond to these concerns is an excellent way of knowing more about what our users think about our libraries.  It also gives us the perfect opportunity to respond to the criticism in a way that hopefully resolves the issue for the user and shows us to be responsive to feedback and willing to act on any suggestions for improvement.  People will complain about things, so I say we are better in that conversation that out of it!

One last point… making “the right decision” versus making “a good decision”.  A few months ago I read about subtleties implied in each, and found the difference liberating.  As I see it, making “the right” decision is committed in time, as it supposes that morality (right) is permanent and unshakeable.  On the other hand, “a good” decision implies one that takes into account all relevant information available at the time, and tries to balance competing priorities for the common interest.  As factors change over time, what was a good decision in the past may need review as more information comes to light; whereas the right decision can be hard to go back on.

Well done, Google, for trying something out and having the courage to admit that it didn’t go as planned.

Further reading: R.I.P. Google Wave by the inimitable Ange Fitzpatrick