When I google myself a comedian comes up. Thanks to him for hiding all those college memories from the rest of the internet. But what happens when I’m trying to grow my personal brand? I get buried under this UBC comedian’s massive shadow and the simplicity of my own name. Adding a keyword from my hobbies (teacher, photography, fencing or hiking) still turn up dry. The only way I could actually find myself was with a location tag like Korea and even that this blog is only 1 of dozens of hits. I think the best way for me to combat my ungoogleability is to use another tag. Live, Travel, Teach seems to be working pretty well and encompasses my passions. Whether I stay with this name or change it I’ll certainly need to do some legwork to optimize my SEO results.
Lets just pretend for a few moments that you’ve already found me. If we have a mutual connection (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) then suddenly I jump higher up in the google search. My footprint might not be very large but scouring the internet I like to think I’ve got a pretty good reputation. You can find evidence of my edtech presentations, hundreds of articles about traveling around Asia with a dozen or so more about teaching. My Instagram looks professional (even if I don’t feel like a true photographer) and everything I found was as I tell my students “school appropriate.” I’ve managed to keep most of the crazy college videos from ever being recorded and am rather happy with my online reputation.
But how can I grow my footprint so that this reputation that I’m so proud of gets out there? This is my challenge, one that I hope EDUC 932 and Prof. Steven Katz can help me with. I’ll be growing my PLN (largely through Twittter). I will redirect my blog into a more purposeful series of articles that will hopefully increase the splash I make on your Google Search. Even with all of these I think my footprint might remain scarce so I’ll have to increase my activity on various platforms. Rather than just writing on my blog I need to follow others and actually read/comment. I need to get onto Twitter more often and build a network. In effect I need to focus on growing my PLN and hopefully that will lead to a larger digital footprint!
