I adore having my own online place to share my work and views as a school library staff member. It’s a place to connect with other professionals, a place to reflect, to write to document and to share. It has helped me enormously, opened up incredible opportunities, helped me secure work, and I’ve found it has been helpful to others. I’m sometimes asked how I started out or how to create a professional online presence and brand, so here are a few tips for getting started, along with my own story.

Your purpose

The first step is deciding what your purpose is for creating an online place for sharing. Is it for sharing your personal reflections, connecting with others, gathering ideas? Your purpose might change over time, mine certainly has. I created Madison’s Library to share book reviews and it has morphed and grown into sharing my work as a school library staff member and helping to transform school library practice. Having a clear purpose will help get you started.

Why is this different?

I find having a professional online presence very different from just having a social media account. The main difference is purpose. You are going to share purposely. You are crafting a presence through what you share. For me, that difference is also separating the personal from the professional. It’s about who I am as a school library professional, my approach and practice, not my personal views or life. An online professional presence is incredible for networking and collaborating. It can be as simple as having a LinkedIn account or as complex as having a YouTube channel, website and full suite of social media accounts.

What and where

Once you have a bit of an idea for your purpose it’s time to think about what you will share and where. Maybe you are a writer like me, so need a place to share long from writing. Perhaps video or images are more your thing. Or maybe a combination of them all. There are different platforms that can help you achieve different hinge, from a website and blog, social media accounts, to YouTube channel.

Creating a brand

Next up is brand. I love, love, love branding and it’s a whole thing, which you can find more about here. All I will say here is that a brand is so much more than your logo and colour scheme. It’s about what you will share and why. It’s about your tone. It’s about your approach. It’s about what people can expect from you and the lines you won’t cross. These values underpin your online presence. For me, my brand is one of inclusion and welcome, it’s about creativity, innovation and change in the school library profession. It’s purely school library based, you won’t find anything about my personal life, food, pets or anything else on my sites and channels and it’s about reflection, improvement and helping others.

Continuity across platforms

Once your got a brand, you’ll need a name. You might create this during your branding process. I’m so lucky my website name Madison’s Library, which I created for book reviews, translates perfectly for sharing about school library work. When choosing a name, it’s hard to see what your future iterations might become, but try to select something that captures your brand and purpose and also gives you a bit of freedoms in scope to expand or change. If you capture your true underlying purpose and essence, this won’t be an issue. Once you have this name, it’s time to check it works across all platforms, from a website url, to social media handles. Check sites you don’t think you’ll use because you might want them in the future and it’s a good idea to have this continuity across platforms and secure them for the future.

Just yours – unique from your school library brand

My presence is entirely unique and separate from my school library brand. This is for a number of reasons. First intellectual property. While I reflect on my work at school, my writing and research is my work and not my school’s.  I also want to be able to keep my brand and presence should I move school. I know professionals who have lost everything because it was all built on a school platform or under a school name. I suggest avoiding this. It also means I can create my own brand, share what’s important to me, rather than sharing within the confines of the rules or brand of my school. They are two very separate, different things.

Guidelines

I have in my head some guidelines around what I share and what I don’t. This fits my brand. I don’t share photos of students on my website and social media. Ever. I don’t share names of my colleagues and while I have a disclaimer that views are my own and not my school’s, I’m also careful with what I share about my school community. I share my work, daily happenings and school library tips. I tend not to share my own image, that’s just a personal preference. My leadership are aware of my online presence, I make sure to tell them. I don’t quite ask permission, but I do tell them to get a feel for if they are supportive or what lines they would be angry about if I cross them. You don’t have to have the same guidelines as me, they need to be your own, but it’s important to create your own set of guidelines so you know what you are comfortable ins sharing and try to foresee any issues that might arise from within your workplace (protect yourself). Your guidelines might also include who you will follow and the kind of content you’ll reshare or like.

Getting started

At this point, you are well on your way to getting started. Now you can have some fun with colours (try Coolors, it’s addictive), logos and graphics (Canva is free for educators), and launching your platforms.

 

Good luck and I hope to see more of you sharing your work