The world of academia today (and the world in general) is qualitatively different than it was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago academics became familiar with the work of other academics through publications (actual paper books in libraries and journals that were, again, actually printed on paper and arrived in, err, the mail. Remember mail?), in-person conferences and lectures, and, well, that's it.

Today if someone wants to find information about you or a particular research area there are a ton of ways to do so: Google, Google scholar, LinkedIn, Academia.edu, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, JStor...the list goes on and on. And even if you aren't on social media (though I bet you are), something will come up about you (or someone with your name) on Google.

This is all to say that you already have an academic brand, whether you buy into the business terminology or no. There is an image of you out there in the world, partially constructed by you and partially constructed for you by your institutional affiliations, your publications, and the pictures of your cat on Instagram. :) And this image, now more than ever, if extremely accessible not only to your academic colleagues and students, but to millions of other people. From their phones.

For this reason alone you should begin to think about developing your academic brand, but there are even more compelling reasons. If you have a well-defined academic brand, you can make decisions about what you want to do with your career that builds that brand. You are more likely to say no to spurious projects, and be more focused in your pursuit of brand-building activities. By actively crafting your academic brand, you begin to control the image you are putting out in the world, particularly online. The result is that people who are looking for you find you, not someone else's dribs and drabs about you.

What is an academic brand?

The term academic brand is a profession-specific version of the term personal brand. Your personal brand is the image of yourself that you present the the world. Borrowed from the world of marketing (which is why it makes some academics bristle), it includes who you are, what you do, and how you represent what you do to the world. (It's like your habitus, in Bourdieu's terms.) Academic brand just means the personal brand that you construct for yourself as an academic. Your academic brand is not exactly your identity/ies, but rather the professional identity that you purposefully craft and show to the world.

I'm not suggesting that your brand is disingenuous. But I am saying that your brand is yours to construct. You don't have to make your political beliefs part of your brand, for example, if you don't want to. Some fields will accept the inclusion of political beliefs in your academic brand more than others. There are no hard-and-fast rules. You need to decide what you include and what you leave out as you go through the process of constructing your personal brand.

You may want to intentionally separate your academic brand from your personal brand. As an example, I have a pretty well-developed personal brand on social media that could be explained as: working fit mom who doesn't take herself, or this crazy parenting thing, too seriously. My academic brand is more focused on post-structural linguistic practices in higher education classrooms. Both brands are evolving, and I hope, merging into something more like: leading post-structural linguistic researcher mom of three who is trying to balance academia, parenting, and her own well-being with love and self-forgiveness.

For me, I am striving to merge my academic and personal brands, but you may not feel comfortable or ready to do that--and that's perfectly fine. The important thing is to begin crafting your brand (personal or academic) so that you are in control. The process of doing so not only helps create a better representation of you in to the world, but also can be an excellent tool for developing your own focus as you navigate the sticky waters of tenure, family, publications, teaching, service...what I call this academic life.