The Groundswell and Your Educational Brand Management

I started reading the book Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

What is a groundswell you ask?

“…a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their own experience, and get what they need—information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power—from each other. The groundswell is broad, every shifting, and ever growing.”

What is it made out of you might ask?

“It encompasses blogs and wikis; podcasts and YouTube; and consumers who rate products.”  This of course means they can and will rate teachers, principals, and schools.

“…write their own news,…” of course their own reviews about you as a teacher, principal, or your school.

“It’s unstoppable. It affects every industry.”

In other words, it’s coming and it’s coming to education.

The others share an interesting story about how the encryption code for high-definition DVD’s was posted on a blog and then that blog was vote on the Digg site. The attorneys for the motion picture industry complaining about the post immediately contacted Digg. Digg removed the content. But the code was picked up by others and posted again on Digg. As fast as they could remove post that contained the code, it was back on Digg. In the end Digg stopped fighting the people. The people had created a groundswell that could not be resisted.

The point of the story is for teachers, principals, and schools, there is information about you and there are people, who are going to look for it, find it, provide it, and share it with others. It is your brand and you must think about taking control of your brand.

You may be able to control your perception with those you work with, or the parents, the district, and maybe even the students, but you won’t be able to control your brand once the online world gets a hold of information and data directly related to who you are as a teacher or educator. How you teach, what you teach, those crazy photos of you at the party last weekend, your credentials, your test scores, your comments on that blog you thought nobody reads; it’s all out there. Control your brand or the groundswell will control it for you.