How will I cultivate my digital presence and digital identity? Where do I start? How do I want to present myself? What is my purpose?
As I reflected on these questions to figure out where to begin, I decided to Google the subject in order to help generate some ideas. The first few articles that came up were focused on digital branding and digital marketing of one’s company. This is not what I was really looking for; however, I did read a couple of articles to give my brain a kickstart. I then decided to refine my search to “cultivating a digital presence” and found an Open Access article which was perfect, “Cultivating Your Academic Online Presence”. The authors, Shannon Lucky and Joseph E. Rubin, state that “there are a few things you can do to take control of your online identity with the goal of making sure you show up where it matters, and that the information is curated and relevant to your professional identity”. They also continue to say that the key thing to remember when creating your digital presence and digital identity is to look at it “through the eyes of a future colleague, collaborator, student or manager.” These are points that I definitely want to keep in mind when cultivating my digital identity. I would like to keep it professional and relevant. My future directions for my online presence would be to open up new opportunities in research and education. My current goals for my program would be the following:
- to maintain my blog by posting my academic reflections which will include citations
- to share information i.e. articles, podcasts, etc. that can be easily accessed to start conversations with colleagues or with others in the virtual community
I feel that as I develop my online presence and identity, my goals will eventually evolve. I will ensure that I maintain my blog (i.e. posting and commenting) continuously, share information by posting on Twitter or on my blog and engage others.
Knowledge gap…when thinking about this aspect of my plan, I will need to do my research on a lot of topics for me to grow professionally and personally. So, I feel that this will keep developing through my posts, reading posts and comments from my cohort, etc.
The measure of success for me would be to have people engaged. Another method to measure success would be to possibly use Google Analytics (Lucky and Rubin, 2017) to track views of my blog. This is something that I will need to do more research about.
A plan in progress…
Lucky, S., & Rubin, J. (2017). Cultivating Your Academic Online Presence. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 12(2), 59-64. https://doi.org/10.18438/B89S9W
Hi Joyce, I was interested in the article you came across, so I looked it up and started reading. Something in the article caught my eye, a landing page! I had not considered creating a landing page for the MALAT blog, I always considered a landing page to be connected to a website. After reading the section in the article I am starting to rethinking my reasoning. In the context of creating a digital professional profile a landing page offers a great platform. Thank you for the article and the stream of thoughts it generated in me. What is your opinion on a landing page? Would you consider developing one for your blog?
Hi Anita, thank you for your comments! I’m really glad to hear that the article generated new thoughts for you. I felt the same when I read it. To tell you honestly, prior to reading the article, I had not heard the term “landing page”. I feel that having a landing page would be very beneficial and would consider using one in the future. Lucky and Rubin stated that a landing page would “list contact information, a brief description of the author and their research interests and may link to their institutions or other sites”. I can see myself using it to connect those who would be interested in my work to my blog page and/or direct them to another site or page which would describe my future research or projects. I found another link to an interesting article written by Kelly Cannon from thesitsgirls.com where she describes what a landing page is and gives some ideas of landing pages for a blog. https://www.thesitsgirls.com/blogging/landing-pages-for-your-blog/
Enjoy!
Lucky, S., & Rubin, J. (2017). Cultivating Your Academic Online Presence. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 12(2), 59-64. https://doi.org/10.18438/B89S9W
Great post Joyce!
I like your title and your acknowledgment that your goals will change over time. I think when I tried to write my post I was getting caught up trying to decide what is achievable and manageable to me. I think I found that particularly hard because I was thinking about my digital presence more long term. I like that you focused on what is achievable for you know with a commitment to reexamine your goals at a later date.
Thank you for your kind words, Jessica!
As Alastair had shared with us during one of the virtual symposiums (I believe it was Trish Dyck’s presentation) that he is a person who takes time to process, I found myself nodding in agreement. As I sat and reflected about my plans for my blog, I realized that I was taking some time (a little too much time) to think about it and found myself changing my mind a lot and had some self-doubt. I decided to look up some blogging sites and found a few bloggers who posted their opinions that it is okay for a writer or their blog to evolve over time. Here are their links: https://insearchofsheila.com/blog-evolve-over-time/ and https://menwithpens.ca/three-ways-writers-evolve-over-time/ .
Joy, S (2018, March 3). Why Your Blog Should Evolve Over Time to be Successful. Retrieved April 30, 2018, from https://insearchofsheila.com/blog-evolve-over-time/
Simon, P (n.d). Three Ways Writers Evolve Over Time. Retrieved April 30, 2018, from https://menwithpens.ca/three-ways-writers-evolve-over-time/ .
Another wonderful post Joyce!
It made me feel a lot more comfortable to hear that you too had taken some time to process all the information regarding how to create your personal digital presence. It’s nice to know there are other processor in the cohort.
The down side of being a high processor is that sometimes we can get caught up in “paralysis by analysis” Kast, Rosenzweig, 1970 (as cited by Langley, 1995). I myself fear the reprisal of failing in my intent. I would prefer to have the right answer the first time. That’s probably the best when you are in an environment which allows for a lot of time to ruminate, however this unfortunately, is not the world of social media where everything is fast and immediate. As put by Ann Langley (1995) “In environments where speed to market is an important competitive advantage, this is a major problem.”
I’m still not comfortable with the idea of constant posting etc. however, there are two sources that have helped me.
One is the article posted on Mendeley, Personal digital branding as a professional asset in the digital age, which can be found here: https://www.mendeley.com/research-papers/personal-digital-branding-professional-asset-digital-age/
This reminded me that inaction becomes action, and that avoiding posting may come with some negative consequences. With this I, somewhat timidly, began posting. Now comes the second problem which is time, which bring me to my second asset.
Sprint design: http://www.gv.com/sprint/
My division at work are beginning to sprint a lot of projects. The model for sprint design is around rapid idea development, prototyping, and if necessary, failure. Sprint trains you that if you fail, you can do it quickly and learn quickly so you can move forward.
Kast, F. E., & Rosenzweig, J. E. (1970). Organization and management: A systems approach. McGraw-Hill. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
Langley, A. (1995). http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/d-2016-154.pdf. Sloan Management Review, Spring, 63-76. doi:10.18411/d-2016-154
The Design Sprint. (2016). Retrieved May 6, 2018, from http://www.gv.com/sprint/
To both Joyce and Alistair, I admire the level of thought and processing that went into your posts. As someone who is personally very goal oriented, I just wanted to mention that I really appreciate those that take time to think about the process.
I hope that you can find a way to capitalize on your thoughtfulness in creating your digital presences and see it as a gift as opposed to a barrier. I hope your measurements for success also acknowledge the time commitment required to produce well-thought out and well-reasoned posts.
Hi Alastair,
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and resources. During our virtual symposium with Trish Dyck, I was very relieved to hear that I wasn’t alone when it comes to needing time to processing thoughts/ideas. I know that I may have to speed up for the digital environment, so this is something that I will have to improve upon throughout our program. In the article you sent, the following statement, “as digital communications become more prevalent, absence of an online presence could potentially send an unintended negative message that the individual is ill-equipped for digital communications” (Kleppinger and Cain, 2015) really hits home. This solidifies the need to maintain a blog frequently or keep one’s LinkedIn or professional profiles or sites updated. I am very interested in exploring the sprint design model especially if you found that it has been effective for your team projects. If you don’t mind, I may end up asking you for advice.
Kleppinger, C. A., & Cain, J. (2015). Personal digital branding as a professional asset in the digital age. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 79(6). https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe79679
Absolutely! In the book a proper sprint takes five days. However, when dealing with physician leads, Primary Care Network Executives, etc. we are very lucky to get them for one full day. So we’ve adapted the sprint from a five day process to a one to two day process which is intensively exhausting. Anyways, I’m no expert but I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.