Journalism branding: a personal case study of my Twitter presence

I used to “be myself” on Twitter; these days, it seems that I’m just promoting my personal brand.

I’m always behind the idea that change is a good thing. Especially with social media, I’m usually open to changes in its design, various functions, and general user culture. It’s useful to remember that every modern luxury we experience today in 2016 from smartphone technology to legalization of gay marriage is a product of groups and individuals pushing to bring us as a society to embrace new ways of living our everyday lives.

But after reading this recent article titled “Journalism branding: Impact on reporters’ personal identities” published on Journalist’s Resource, A Harvard Shorenstein Center Project, I started to really re-think the way I have been presenting myself on Twitter. Essentially the article focused on the key findings found in a study on personal branding in journalism which was conducted by communication professor Avery E. Holton of The University of Utah and journalism professor Logan Molyneux of Temple University. After interviews with 41 reporters and editors from all over the United States, they were able to come up with a concise list of key findings which include:

-Reporters are increasingly focusing their attention on developing their professional identities on social media rather than their personal identities.

-Reporters have been asked to make changes to the way they present themselves and their content on social media, including adding their news organization’s logo to their social media pages and providing fewer links to news items that were not published by their employers. They also have been asked to help promote events and partnerships that might cast their news agencies in a positive light.

-There still is uncertainty among reporters and editors about acceptable practices on social media, especially as they relate to personal branding and company branding. (source)

The key thing to understand here is that the words “professional identities” and “personal branding” all hint at the same idea —if you’re a journalist, your Twitter presence should be as if you were a publication or brand. And the part of that concept which concerns me the most comes from that final point: no one knows what the actual rules of this are.

For me personally, I feel that every tweet I send out could very possibly be read by a potential employer who plays by these rules. So each tweet is edited and cleansed multiple times to the point where most of the time, I end up just getting frustrated and delete the drafted tweet. Each tweet must be personal, but not too personal. And I’ve got to balance those personal tweets with some well-educated re-tweets and article shares. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media but I also completely understand the danger of how one wrong tweet could very easily ruin my potential career (does anyone remember Justine Sacco?).

At the end of the day, I really want to be a digital journalist; but I am obviously also a human being. So I’m hoping that I will be able to finally summon up the courage to take that first step of bringing my Twitter account back to a place of authenticity and raw, unfiltered posts. It’s all about change in small steps so maybe I’ll just surround my personal posts with a lot of pizza emojis.