So, I need to consider my personal brand this week. I’ve been thinking about this one for a while and I can look at it from two directions: external and internal.
For external I did the asked-for Google search on my name an you can see the results on the right, or see the live results if you’d like. All of the first page results are me with the exception of the LinkedIn result which brings up a few different “mike sauers” but I’m first on that page so I think I’m well covered in this regard. (I suppose it helps that I pretty much sign up for everything and make most of it public.)
Internally speaking it’s a little more complicated. Ok, so I’m easily found but what do people see once they find me. Well, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll see a seemingly random set of posts from funny videos to political commentary to libraries to tech. Head on over to my Facebook account (which I don’t use all that much) and lately you’ll see a lot of political-leaning content since I’ve been signing online petitions and they all seem to provide a one-click share this on Facebook option. My blog should be feeding there but it seems to not be at the moment and I’ve not bothered to fix that yet.
In some very limited ways I do separate my “private” life from my “public” life (i.e. you’ll not see a lot here about my family) but I can’t so easily separate my “personal” life from my “work” life. Have I posted a thing or two not specifically related to work while at work? Yes. (Though I would argue that blogging in and of itself regardless of the topic being blogged about it related to my job.) Do I post things from home that are distinctly work related? Again, yes.
Here’s what I’ve pretty much decided. I blog and post to social networks because I want to. I’m cognizant of what I post but I don’t tend to be overly concerned with what others think of what I’ve posted and I own what I post. Ultimately, if you’re not going to hire me because of something I’ve posted online, I probably didn’t want to work with them anyway. Besides, I don’t seem to be lacking for employment, writing requests, and speaking engagements, so I must be doing something right.
