Wednesday 27 July 2011

CPD23 Thing 4: the short tweet

I set up my Twitter account yesterday afternoon ... ... then deactivated it this morning!  I had to talk myself into setting it up in the first place.  I couldn't see how I was going to find it useful - I would rather use my blog to write about anything I find interesting and would rather read other blogs than trawl through lots of short Tweets each day - I can hear the 'tuts' across cyberspace now!

I intially thought that I could set it up, follow some organisations, then set up a Twitter RSS feed in my blog so I only need to open the one.  Then I found that Twitter no longer run RSS feeds so my plan fell dead in the water and I deactivated my account.

I love the purpose of an RSS feed, though, bringing information together in one place and have added CILIP's RSS feed to my blog as well as a feed from Ancestry.co.uk - this one at least should mean that I have my blog open every day!

Thursday 14 July 2011

CPD23 Thing 3: keeping me current once I'm out there!

I have just finished setting up my new profile on LinkedIn and it's got me thinking.  How many tools do we really need to advertise ourselves in and how many are duplicating the other?

Do people keep a mental list of all the things they're signed up to (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc.) and make sure they tick off each one whenever personal information changes?  I am a bit of an organisation freak so I would ideally like one tool that I use to store and publicise all of my professional information.  Why do I need to spread myself across all these tools?

CPD23 Thing 3: getting me out there

I have searched for my name in Google and the top results include: a female voice-over artist; an actress; four LinkedIn profiles (none of which are me); a couple of Facebook profiles (one of which could be me) and; a Twitter account (which definitely isn't me).  Not very impressive.  However, if I did create a Twitter account, or a LinkedIn profile, how would I differentiate myself from the few that already exist in my name?

I then searched for my name and my place of work - a little more success here!  This time the first few entries do refer to me: the first is one of my postings in the LisLink mailing list archive; the others relate to CoFHE LASEC meetings I have attended.  If I searched for the name of my blog it turns up third in the list - I think I should be able to help bump this up by adding the name of my place of work to my blog.  To help develop my online professional presence I can investigate creating a LinkedIn profile.

One of the things you need to consider when developing your online brand is how other people are going to be searching for or finding you - remember to include keyword labels such as library, or your name or place of work to try and make sure you turn up in any search you feel you ought to.

Monday 11 July 2011

CPD23 Thing 2: exploring other blogs and enlightenment

I've been having a look around other blog postings using the Delicious list to try and help filter the many down to the slightly not so many!

When trying to select which blogs to follow from this vast community I found that a blog's name and the design of the page really influenced my decision whether to even read the postings.  If I'm coming back the blog regularly I want a nice clean page that's easy to read and I'm afraid I was put off a few by really bad design.  After that, I found that a lot of the blogs are still newly established without much content beyond the cpd23 tasks which made it difficult to decide who to follow.  However, I am now a proud follower of four other blogs: one is by a colleague (although I found it through another blogger's recommendation), two are picked from the FE college librarian commnunity, and the last is Phil Bradley's blog - surely can't go wrong there.

Looking at these various blogs has made me realise how little I really think about things going on in the library and information world.  I tend to bury my head in the sand a bit and just focus on what affects my day-to-day work.  I'm looking forward to the fact that having the responsibility of producing an interesting blog will force me to take more notice of what's happening and new developments - CILIP's update will not be making such a quick journey to the bin anymore!

CPD23 Thing 1: the excited wiggle!

When I first saw the outline of the cpd23 things I had one of those internal excited wiggles!  Here is a course that is set up in weekly segments - and therefore appeals to my strong need for organisation! - and covers a diverse range of topics.  After completing my Chartership last summer I've been experiencing a bit of a cpd drought so this couldn't come at a better time.

Although I'm a bit late in starting I am really looking forward to working my way through each week's activities - starting with my very first blog posting!