As professors, it is key to make sure to establish your personal brand online to not only present what you are researching or presenting at various conferences, but also in teaching. The perfect equation for achieving the strongest personal brand for professors is to have a strong reputation in research as well as teaching. In fact, it should be equal. However, many professors forget the other key component that is needed to make the complete package, and that is the sustainable and collaborative relationship with the practitioners.
I know several professors who fall into one category or another – but we can’t afford this in 2013 or for the future. We have to be on top of our game in the classroom and make sure we are preparing our students for the workplace, but we also have to make sure we share our experiences in research and how this can be strategically applied into the practice. Teaching these lessons as well as learning from students at the same time is the perfect combination to have. Some professors have done a great job in establishing their reputations online with personalized websites and blogs, podcasts, and Twitter chat sessions. However, there are those that say that they “don’t have enough time” or it’s “not relevant to them.” Well, I say that this is something we all have to be aware of, especially when it comes to teaching.
This is a particular issue I have tried to address in my social media class specifically, and here are some ways professors can establish their own personal brand in the classroom for students, colleagues, and practitioners:
- Personalized Hashtag: I have seen fellow professors use Twitter for their online conversations for their classes, but what happens if you have the same number and abbreviation as another class at another school? Best way to get around this is to have your own personalized hashtag. This is what I have done for my class, and it will be changing every year since it’s just #Freberg13. Let your fellow colleagues know your hashtag so they can promote it for recruits (who are interested in the class possibly), advisors, fellow professors, and even practitioners so they can see what you are covering in your class. You can track your hashtag with a variety of different resources to see the scope of the reach via Hashtags.com or Hashtracking.
- Opportunity to share your story: By establishing a name for yourself online by sharing insights and relevant information, you are in a sense telling your story. In addition, if you are willing to share some of your personal interests and hobbies, the better. Whether it is traveling, cooking, working out, or other related hobbies and activities – this shows a level of transparency to others that you are not only a professor, but also a human being as well.
- Constantly prepping for class: This is pretty much what I think any professor teaching a social media class needs to consider – it’s a constant prep before, during, and after the class! It’s good to have a foundation of key strategies, tools, and methods/principles for the class, but you need to make sure you present relevant information to your students and communities in real-time. This can be done by 1) spending a set amount of time looking for trends, cases, and topics before and after the class – similar to the time you spent looking at the news to see what is going on in the world and 2) using tools that will help aggregate the information to you directly based on preset topics. These two strategies have helped me out a lot. In order to establish your personal brand as being innovative and creative, you have to spend the time and energy to look at what is going on that’s new and relevant for your class – and be willing to share this with others.
- Being generous with resources: One way to separate yourself from others is to be generous with materials from class, research, and practice. Whether this is establishing a resource page or exchanges of presentations, assignments, and syllabi, We are all in the same team here when it comes to education, and what better way to establish yourself as a resource by sharing your insights and knowledge with others?
- Thinking ahead to be an innovator: This is where creativity comes into play – we talk all the time in PR about how to do an environmental scan across the various landscapes our clients are involved in, but do we actually do this ourselves as professors? I have found that those who have been successful in separating themselves from the crowd have done this. This is one of the reasons why I looked to Hootsuite University as an option last spring and have incorporated it into my class for this fall. The other thing that I wanted to do was to look at ways to incorporate Google Glass into the classroom as a member of their Explorer program. Dr. William Ward (Syracuse) has done a great job with this so far with Google Glass, so it’s going to be interesting to see what other ideas we can generate with this new tool.
- Documenting guest lectures and shared experiences: One of the things I have seen from fellow colleagues as a good best practice for establishing their personal brand is to invite practitioners into the classroom to cover a particular topic. These can be in person or done via Google+, Skype, or another video conference call set up. Important thing to note is to make sure you also publicize their efforts on social media as well. Not only their Twitter handles, but you may want to consider also tagging their association as well. In addition, help document these guest lectures through pictures and video. This is one of the things that I am going to do more this semester, so stay tuned! 🙂
- Promote it with owned media: As professors, you are the best PR person you have to promote what you are doing in the classroom. This means establishing your own website and blog as a personal hub where you are able to house all of this great content and information about what you are doing in research, teaching, and consulting. You want to make sure to connect this of course to shared media (ex. social media) with others. For example, one of the things I did this past semester was create a video with all of the guest lectures and final presentations from class. Here’s the video”
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/64774223[/vimeo]
In summary, we give advice for students to establish their own personal brands and reputation in the profession, but we also have to consider this as well as professors. Prospective students, parents, businesses, and practitioners are all looking online to see what universities are doing in the classroom, so they will be looking to see what is available online about specific courses and professors.
I wish all of my friends and colleagues the very best as they start their fall semester courses! Have a wonderful day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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