A Snow White Dome

When fiddling on my blog today I noticed that, in my header image, I had brown or pepper and salt coloured hair. Nowadays my dome is snow white.  My branding should reflect the person that I am. 

I liked my old image that showed me waving while frolicking in the ocean. I liken my genealogy environment to a body of water where I can swim - a place where I can relax and have fun, play in the shallows or dive deep, it's somewhere that can throw up challenges and surprises. 

When holidaying in Vanuatu earlier this year I was enjoying a swim in a glorious lagoon when Mr Geniaus snapped a photo of me enthusiastically waving and showing my white hair plastered to my head. The image shows me in a happy place as I am when playing in my genealogy world. 

Over I went to Canva where I created a new header using their Blogger Header template. I've uploaded the completed image to the blog. While I may tweak it over the coming days it will remain basically the same until I next fiddle with my branding.  Next task is creating a new header for the Geniaus Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/geniauspage

The new header - created with Canva

GeniAus Favicon

There are often several browser tabs open at once on my computer.

It has been said that pictures speak louder than words. I can identify many of these from the little Favicons that display in the browser tabs but when I have  some with the same little icon it's hard to distinguish one from the other. I found directions from Chick Croll on how to do this here https://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2018/10/adding-favicon-2018.html. This used to be a fiddly process but it is so easy now.

Until recently if I had three or four Blogger blogs open I could not identify which was which without reading the small text in the tabs but now that has changed.

Now I just have to look for for my familiar GeniAus portrait Favicon to find my blogger blog. I can also easily identify Myrt's Musings from DearMYRTLE's favicon.

My open browser tabs

That little portrait is an important of my branding - several years ago when I was going to change my portrait to a more lifelike/real photo one of my genimates said "You can't do that - it's part of your brand. So now I use it at every opportunity.

Together with my internet identity GeniAus it make my content easily recognisable.

Trove Tuesday - Anonymous?

When I am selecting posts to share in my weekly GeniAus Gems post on this blog one of the first things I do is to try and establish who has written whichever post I am recommending. This is sometimes quite difficult to ascertain.

During my training as a librarian years ago we were warned about Anonymous works and were counselled to approach these with a degree of scepticism. We were taught was that, during the process of evaluating a work, we had to establish the authority of the person who was the author of that work. When I am reading blogs I'm surprised at how difficult some bloggers make it for me to discover their identuty.

 I know there are some reasons like child protection, witness protection programs etc for people to remain anonymous but I don't think all the anonymous bloggers I come across are in this category.

Do you like to know who has written what you are reading?

As it's Trove Tuesday I decided to see what articles about Anonymous I could find on Trove so here goes.

1935 'Anonymous.', The Australian Worker (Sydney, NSW : 1913 - 1950), 20 March, p. 19. , viewed 05 Apr 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146008427

1923 'ANONYMOUS.', Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong, NSW : 1856 - 1950), 9 November, p. 2. , viewed 05 Apr 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article133023171

1918 'ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTIONS.',Tweed Daily (Murwillumbah, NSW : 1914 - 1949), 4 September, p. 2. , viewed 05 Apr 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article191058997

1903 'ANONYMOUS.', The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), 6 June, p. 23. , viewed 05 Apr 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128458994

Are you branded?

I follow with interest the blogs of several of my former colleagues.

One young woman who is an exceptional practitioner of her trade is Stacey of the Librarians are go blog. In her latest blog post Stacey talks about the importance of branding for Librarians in a report of a conference she recently attended.

If you read Stacey's post and substitute Genealogist and Genealogy for Librarian and Libraries you will find what she writes most relevant to our situation.

In summary Stacey suggests:

1. Get yourself either a memorable name (obviously some are more memorable than others) or a memorable handle. Use it in all the realms that you want to be linked to your brand. 
2.  Be careful to maintain your brand, only write/appear as your handle when it is aligned with what you are trying to project about your brand
3.  Monitor your brand, create an alert so that you know when your brand name is being talked about or used, monitor traffic on blogs or websites, monitor when people attribute your thoughts in tweets or other social media. This also helps you to see what your intended or unintended audience's interest are
4.  Take some time to look at the branding of others and notice when it comes up. You can learn a lot by watching these people

Family History Through the Alphabet – G is For …Shameless Self Promotion

GeniAus was the identity I adopted in my early days on social networking sites. Like many other early adopters of Web 2.0 applications I was nervous about revealing my identity to the world.

After using sites such as Blogger and Twitter for a couple of years I realised that it was safe to come out of the closet and use my real name, Jill Ball. As long as one is sensible and remains aware of the dangers of sharing too much information on social sites I feel that one does not need to hide behind the anonymity of a pseudonym.... There are, however, the benefits to having a unique, short and snappy ID that describes one.

GeniAus, a genealogist from Australia, is how I am known in some genealogy circles and I continue to use GeniAus as my username in many online forums. I can be found in several places as GeniAus except for You Tube where someone else grabbed the name before me, if ever they delete that account I'll be ready to nab it.

There are benefits to having a unique identity; I have several genealogy contacts called Carol, a few named Kerry and a couple of Joans. I sometimes am confused as to whom I am communicating with, however when Cassmob and Dance Skeletons communicate I know exactly who they are.

GeniAus by Emily

On Social networking sites, instead of a real photograph,  I have continued to use a little pencil portrait of me done by my granddaughter about six years ago . I have considered replacing it with a photo but the portrait is such an important part of my online identity that I keep it. When I was considering changing a genealogy contact said to me that it is easy to find my photo on the Internet if one needs to know what I look like and that is precisely what people have done when we have arranged face-to-face meetings for the first time. The little portrait is an important part of my branding (especially good if I was breakfast cereal or washing powder). I have even put this image on my new business card!

The previous couple of paragraphs have been tangential to the original purpose of this post which was to tell you a bit about GeniAus ie indulge in Shameless Self Promotion.  I like the way this post has developed so will let modesty reign and omit the glowing advertisement for GeniAus. 

A Case of Identity

In 2002 when I started using Blogger for the now defunct TLNewsau blog I was wary of identifying myself online. Current wisdom then was that one should create an online name/identity and use that lest some predator find out your true identity and either steal it or stalk you.

At that stage because I was a librarian I chose the bibliaugrapher label as it seemed to describe my activity and have a reference to my geographical location. When I started blogging for genealogy nearly 3 years ago I chose Geniaus (a genealogist from Australia) as my online identity. For consistency I use this ID as my login on quite a number of social networking sites together with a little portrait by my then 6 year old grand-daughter as my avatar. I see Geniaus and that portrait as my branding.

Last year when I was invited to be an Official Blogger for Rootstech I had to come out of the closet and reveal my true identity. This didn't deter me as I realised that, as long as I practised safe social networking, the predators probably wouldn't stalk me (especially when there are a lot of younger and prettier victims online).

In July Google+ appeared, I was lucky enough to be a very early Beta user of this new platform that I just love. To use Google+ one is supposed to use one's real name (although I know of quite a few dodgy IDs out there) so I complied and moved a little further out of the closet. Today in the Blogger Buzz Blog  I read this news Use your Google+ profile with your Blogger blogs.

It said " Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile. 

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

Plus, bloggers who switch will automatically get access to the Google+ integrations we’ll be rolling out in the future"

As I want to enhance my social connections and be in on the ground floor for any new Google+ initiatives I closed the closet door and changed my Blogger profile to my Google+ profile. I am no longer Geniaus on Blogger but Jill Ball who blogs as Geniaus. I hope that the new Google+ integrations come before the month is up as I have that long to crawl back into the closet and reactivate my Geniaus Blogger profile.

Are you changing your Blogger Profile to Google+ or are you adopting a 'wait and see' approach?

I grabbed "Geniaus"

At precisely 2:01 pm (AEST) yesterday, a very convenient time for people downunder, I logged onto Facebook to grab a vanity URL.

I was thrilled to be able to score "Geniaus", the identity I use on a number of Social Networking sites. My son, who was visiting, logged in directly after me and grabbed his preferred name as well.

Genealogists, if you are on Facebook and have not reserved your URL you can find instructions here on the Facebook Blog.