Why and how should scholars build their digital identity?

1. Digital Scholarly Identity
Prof. Bala Iyer
Babson College
Twitter: balaiyer
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2. Is digital branding in the new media relevant for
academics?
Should you be a scholar on the cloud?
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3. Everything is going digital
• Images
• Documents
• Conversations
• Music
• Movies
• Money
• Digital Reputation is
the new currency
• Identity
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Power to the edge
Power Shift from Institution to Individual

4. Why should we go digital?
• School’s reputation – f(faculty, admin, services, ..)
• Many of our stakeholders are digital natives
• They are learning about us online
• Inbound marketing  people find you
• Means to build relationships and attract students
• Digital networks augments social networks
• Sell ideas and influence people  impact
• Rating agencies (academia?) keep score
• Reviewing, consulting, speaking and collaboration
opportunities
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5. The future is already here — it's just not very
evenly distributed
[William Gibson]
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6. Reputation Economy
• Refers to the way in which a person’s or
product’s standing is shaped by a collective of
end-users making their individual assessment
based on our judgment, knowledge and
behavior..
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7. Building blocks
• Presence
• Connections
• Reputation
• Communities
• Conversations
• Sharing
• Identity – the extent to which others can
identify you as a scholar online
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Trust
• Verified identity
• Shared social network
• Shared communities
• Shared interests

8. Reputation
• The beliefs or opinions that are generally held
about someone or something.
• Information used to make a value judgment
about an object or person.
[Randy Farmer]
• It is based on the summary of one’s past
actions defined within the context of a specific
community
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Net Social Capital = Traditional Social Network + Online Social Network

9. How do we measure academic
reputation today?
• Scholarly articles and books
• Reference letters
• Awards -- Keynotes
• Impact factor
– Citation counts
– H-index
• Teaching ratings
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10. New currency
• Ratings and reviews
• Content views
• Number of followers
• Likes. Diggs
• Reach of network
• Subscribers
• @RT
• Authority in online communities
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11. Activities
• Sharing (Slideshare, Google+, ResearchGate)
• Collaboration (RG, DropBox, GoogleDrive)
• Marketing (Blogging, Slideshare, Twitter)
• Dissemination (Twitter, Slideshare, ResearchGate)
• Participate in communities (LinkedIn)
• Monitor/Curate conversations
• Build a following/reputation
• Impact assessment (Google Scholar,
ResearchGate)
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13. LinkedIn
• Profile Page
– Portal
– Accomplishments
– Cross links
• Networking
• Communities
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18. Twitter
• Determine identity
• Information filter
• Hash tags
– #MBA8500
– #digitalscholarlyidentity
– #andyasks
• Lists
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19. How does Andy MacAfee Benefit?
• Keeps the conversation going about his work.
Frequent tweets complement larger, more
infrequent ones (papers, HBR articles, books).
• Considered a specialist on a topic like the Cloud
not just because of his articles alone, but also
because he is a filter. Point to other news /
resources / posts / etc. that you come across
online.
• Inform the community when you've written
something, from a blog post to a book.
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20. Rating Agencies
• Klout
• Empire Avenue
• Identified
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(source)
Not Perfect for Scholars
Not there yet

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The Social Stock Market

24. Practical Considerations
• Value placed by institute
• Stage in professional life
• Professional community
• Professional objectives
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25. Lessons
• Set goals
• Decide identity
• Create online content
• Share and learn from others
• Measure progress
• Wee need new tools to measure impact
• Start TODAY!
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