On Defining my Personal Brand

When I decided to join the Leicester Award, I thought it will be some extra seminars or lectures that I have to attend, read its material, have some assignments to fill and get grades and then .. forget about it! Heading towards the end of the second unit, about two-thirds of it, the whole idea I had is changing. I found that I'm really involved in discovering myself and my online brand. Moreover, I'm interested, more than have to, in reshaping my online presence.

During my study (and work) life, I attended many courses and seminars about self development and other soft skills. Some were part of my study and others were just because of my curiosity about is it possible to -somehow- control your life. I even, organized some human development courses in my university back in Egypt, where as a team leader to a student community in the faculty, I used to prepare a background about the event we want to hold, i.e.,

• what topic is interesting for the audience (students) at that moment, 
• who to invite as a speaker, 
• why we should so that,
• when it is possible to hold the event,
• where could such event being held,
• who is going to volunteer to help in the day,
• how the event is going to be announced and advertised,

 I asked for a meeting with the student community I lead, and we hold meetings with the interested students, put the initial plan and started working. The day went smooth and got many audience who were really pleased and happy to go through such experience. I remembered that event when I searched for my name on the Internet, as I found one of the results is the news about that event back in 2008 on the community page.

To be honest, I googled my name and I expected to get many results as I used to  join almost all the social and professional networks I could reach, in which I used my real name and profession. After seeing it, I am surprised of the number of results appeared in both English and Arabic. I used to communicate with my friends, students and other experts in my field through the Internet for more than eight years now. I realized that there are many information that shouldn't be available today about me and I believe the fact that If someone else wants to know more about me, I should provide them with a single reference for my work aspect and another one for the friends and family.

 

Some people would think this is affecting the privacy of yourself, and I think it is not like that. If you want to know somebody, you google them and trying to find more about them and how to contact them, e.g., a professor, a role model, an old friend and most importantly an employer who would search for you (as a potential employee). I'm still cannot see why an employer would look for my page on facebook or following my tweets if I will not be using them as part of my job! However, I should start to tidy up. I know it would be difficult with having everything scattered around, but it worth trying.