Branding Yourself Through Social Media: Connecting our Disparate Selves
Before the various options of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google +, the best way that we self-branded was through a ridiculously well crafted CV. For academics it was the CV as well as published articles in reputable journals and a teaching dossier.
The concept of branding in academia is a pertinent one, especially when one uses new media as a pedagogical and research tool. The usual default for new media branding is social media of the type mentioned above. This is usually done along the lines of "hi, this is me, I teach X, I am interested in Y and Z, we have B in common so let's create a virtual community." The interaction with this community is often fast and furious at the beginning, as you add friends, circles, twitter followers. Then there is the necessary plateau, when you become disinterested in the media you have chosen to interact with. This is usually due to "content failure," which translates to "hey, hey community that I am part of, you are boring, entertain me!" (See Edward Tufte's great article on content failure in Powerpoint here ). Usually our use of the platform then drops off and then we accidentally on purpose forget our password and never return (think MySpace).
However, like everything else if we are really interested in creating a brand and using that brand to engage with other academics we have to not fall prey to the pull but rather insist on the push. It is up to us to use media to our advantage to get our message, our brand, out there and thus find like-minded individuals who will in turn become part of our community. We can then extend these communities from virtual to tactile, through research, through collaborative publication, and ultimately through collaborative teaching. Think about the reading groups we were part of in grad school. The creation of these groups, first required a push, and then we reaped the pull; a community of scholars who discussed and created a cloud of ideas that we all in turn pulled from.
Branding is something that academics often do not think about. This is mainly because branding is something that seems so very business oriented and we like to think that academe is not a business but rather a philosophical bastion that stands alone. However, it is becoming very clear that this is not the case. Academe is becoming more of an interaction between business models and pedagogical models. As I have shown above creating our own brand is nothing more than a meta-pedagogy. You can use social media to connect your disparate selves, which is why we try many different platforms in order to see what works best. Ideally the process should look like this:
The concept of branding in academia is a pertinent one, especially when one uses new media as a pedagogical and research tool. The usual default for new media branding is social media of the type mentioned above. This is usually done along the lines of "hi, this is me, I teach X, I am interested in Y and Z, we have B in common so let's create a virtual community." The interaction with this community is often fast and furious at the beginning, as you add friends, circles, twitter followers. Then there is the necessary plateau, when you become disinterested in the media you have chosen to interact with. This is usually due to "content failure," which translates to "hey, hey community that I am part of, you are boring, entertain me!" (See Edward Tufte's great article on content failure in Powerpoint here ). Usually our use of the platform then drops off and then we accidentally on purpose forget our password and never return (think MySpace).
However, like everything else if we are really interested in creating a brand and using that brand to engage with other academics we have to not fall prey to the pull but rather insist on the push. It is up to us to use media to our advantage to get our message, our brand, out there and thus find like-minded individuals who will in turn become part of our community. We can then extend these communities from virtual to tactile, through research, through collaborative publication, and ultimately through collaborative teaching. Think about the reading groups we were part of in grad school. The creation of these groups, first required a push, and then we reaped the pull; a community of scholars who discussed and created a cloud of ideas that we all in turn pulled from.
Branding is something that academics often do not think about. This is mainly because branding is something that seems so very business oriented and we like to think that academe is not a business but rather a philosophical bastion that stands alone. However, it is becoming very clear that this is not the case. Academe is becoming more of an interaction between business models and pedagogical models. As I have shown above creating our own brand is nothing more than a meta-pedagogy. You can use social media to connect your disparate selves, which is why we try many different platforms in order to see what works best. Ideally the process should look like this:
As I try to grapple with the extent of my personal brand and my digital footprint, my main priority remains and will always remain: where will I find a community of pedagogues who are committed to ethical teaching practices? The answer I have come up with at the moment is to promote this blog as a space for dialogue, for all things pedagogical, and increasingly all things edtech.
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