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National Co-Ordinating Centre for Public Engagement - Social Media for Researchers

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National Co-Ordinating Centre for Public Engagement - Social Media for Researchers

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Your definitive guide to using social and creative media as an academic

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How to use Social Media to Disseminate your Research

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How to use Social Media to Disseminate your Research

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Social media for research dissemination - Oxford Global Media

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Being able to disseminate your research beyond a small circle of scholars is now a condition of most research grants. And even if you aren’t in an academic institute and your research project doesn’t depend on grant funding, it is probably being produced in order to influence opinion, policy or deci…

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Social media for research dissemination

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Learn the basics of managing your online presence in academia - free course

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Learn the basics of managing your online presence in academia - free course

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Explore your online presence in this free training!

Join this free course to discover

myths that hold academics back from taking advantage of their online presence

options including websites, social media, and more

get started checklists to help you plan your next steps

Professors, researchers, and graduate students around the world have taken control of their online presence past versions of my free training.

Choose your own adventure

Complete in just over 1 hour

Fun activities

Short videos

Go at your own pace

Free training

Who is this professional development workshop for?

Professors

Researchers

Scientists

Postdocs

Doctoral students

Master's students

Independent scholars

All areas of research and teaching are welcome.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

When does the workshop start and finish?

The workshop will be available May 2, 2022 at 5pm PDT / May 3, 2022 at 12am UTC. It is a completely self-paced online workshop. You decide when you start and when you finish. It takes about 1 hour to complete.

How long do I have access to the workshop?

After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this workshop for as long as it exists - across any and all devices you own. Occasionally workshops do end when a new version is created. This workshop is the 3.0 version of my free online presence training.

How much does this workshop cost?

This is a free professional development training. This workshop does not have a cost.

I've never managed my online presence. Is this training right for me?

Yes, this workshop will help you plan your next steps without feeling overwhelmed. Welcome!

I'm interested in your in-depth paid courses on social media and personal websites. Is this right for me?

If you're interested in my

• Social Media

• Personal Websites

courses for academics, this is a great place to start. Get a feel for what to expect in my paid courses in this workshop.

I'm facilitating an online presence training/workshop for my academic department or university. Is this workshop right for me?

Yes. Professional development facilitators enjoy this workshop because it's something they can easily share with their group. Just have them enroll too! It's free. It's self-paced. And it busts some myths that hold graduate students, faculty, and researchers back from sharing their work online. This is a great place to start.

Interested in having me provide a custom workshop for your group? Email me at [email protected]

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Get Started With Your Online Presence In Academia Workshop

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Jennifer van Alstyne helps professors and researchers understand how their online presence benefits their academic life. Take the first steps in this 1 hour professional development training for free.

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5 reasons that PhD students should engage with social media - blog

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5 reasons that PhD students should engage with social media - blog

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Peer support, finding a place within academia, staying up to date with the latest research, communicating research to wider audiences and navigating life after PhD. Ema Talam and Jon Fairburn outline five ways in which social media, and in particular Twitter, can make all the difference to PhD research at a time when regular academic life has been severely disrupted.

Doing a PhD is hard: lack of work-life balance, uncertainty about the future, diminishing satisfaction with the PhD programme over time, isolation, harassment and discrimination are all too common experiences. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges.

Whilst by no means a panacea, at a time when undertaking a PhD is even more of a fragmented and disjointed experience, social media provides an important space for connection. We - a PhD student and an experienced researcher with over 25 years of experience in academia - put forward the five following reasons why PhD researchers at any stage of the process can benefit from engaging with academic social media and why it is more important now than before COVID-19 pandemic.

Peer Support

Let's start with the peer support. With universities in lockdown and many PhD students working from home, the informal support that comes from working as part of a research community has diminished. Despite its sometimes hostile reputation, peer support is strongly present on Twitter. Readers new to academic Twitter might consider following general academic hashtags, such as #AcademicTwitter, #AcademicChatter and #AcademicMentalHealth, or specifically PhD centred discussions on #phdchat and #virtualnotviral. Whilst a hashtag is not a peer support network, in difficult times they provide pathways to resources and opportunities to meet likeminded people that can make all the difference.

You may even find your peer group is larger than you anticipated. The sudden shift to remote teaching and learning early last year, placed experienced professors and PhD researches running their first classes from all fields in the same position of learning to teach remotely for the first time. The hashtags above as well as being links to a wider research community have also been an invaluable resource for teaching tips and tricks, learning resources and even free training. Do not be afraid to ask questions related to teaching or any aspect of academic life.

Whilst a hashtag is not a peer support network, in difficult times they provide pathways to resources and opportunities to meet likeminded people that can make all the difference.

Finally, Twitter can also be used as a tool for co-ordinating and engaging with existing PhD communities, for instance through organising synchronous and a-synchronous events, such as remote writing retreats.

Navigating your academic discipline(s)

In a similar way hashtags can also be used to find academic communities, for economists #econtwitter is a good place to start as is RePEc's list of economists on twitter. Learned societies and their social media accounts, e.g. in our fields the Royal Economic Society or Regional Studies Association, also provide useful points for finding the latest news from a particular discipline and often provide tailored advice for how certain disciplines approach social media.

For better or worse, social media is a surveillance network. By following academics whose work you are interested in, you can not only directly engage with them, but by simply following you can develop a sense of the research, networks and events they are interested in. These can help you orient your research towards academic communities and projects that may not be represented within your own institution.

While approaching people at conferences can be intimidating, it is almost impossible on Zoom events due to lack of time dedicated for informal networking or even any breaks at all

Social media can also be a source of inspiration for looking beyond your immediate discipline. The shift to digital as a result of the lockdown, has considerably lowered barriers to attending conferences and seminars. These events are regularly advertised via social media and are a great opportunity for you to attend new areas of research and expose yourself to new ideas and methods that can benefit your PhD.

While approaching people at conferences can be intimidating, it is almost impossible on Zoom events due to lack of time dedicated for informal networking or even any breaks at all. Fortunately, the back channel provided by social media, such as Twitter, can provide a means of keeping the conversation going. Look out for event hashtags, which can be used to preview your work, or just to signal your presence and highlight what you found interesting. Finally, in digital environments where genuine engagement can often be minimal, a considered question or engagement is invaluable and can even lead to future collaboration.

Keeping up to date with the latest research

Not all academic dialogue resides in published academic papers. Many academics post and discuss newly published papers on Twitter. Social media such as twitter, are also central to sharing non-standard research outputs like blogposts, infographics, or even datasets. As COVID-19 has demonstrated much influential research has circulated via social media in the form of preprints, long before final publication. These can all be very useful for PhD students to track new developments in their fields of study.

Communicating your research to wider audiences

COVID-19 has also demonstrated the importance of social media as part of the public sphere and having a profile has become increasingly important for making your work visible to important stakeholders, the media and the general public. Established organisations, such as NGOs, or even your university, are likely to have significant audiences on social media and present opportunities to share your research with non-academic audiences.

This could involve simply tagging potential interested stakeholders in posts or taking part in more structured engagements. Simply being on social media does not guarantee public engagement, but it is a platform that allows you to connect to potential research users, which can be invaluable at a time when social contact of any type is minimal.

Life after PhD

Institutions and academics often share information about the job openings on Twitter. Following academics in your field of study can ensure that you have information about new job openings. Twitter makes it easy for information about job openings to be shared - your network can either tag you in posts about job openings or send a direct message. By building your social networks around your research interests, you are more likely to find relevant information about job openings in the field(s) of interest, whether in or outside of the academia. Many government agencies, firms and universities also have their professional profiles on LinkedIn, where they share information about new job opportunities. Additionally, on LinkedIn, you can easily indicate your openness to work or share your CV should you wish to. Both platforms can be used to seek for advice regarding job applications and help write stronger applications.

PhD students (and their supervisors) are sometimes sceptical about the use of social media and the time that will be spent on social media. Engaging with academic social media does not have to involve huge time investments - it can involve only several minutes per day and directly depends on what you want to get out of it. We would argue the benefits of using academic social media far outweigh the costs.

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Socially distanced networks - 5 Reasons PhD students should engage with social media now

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Peer support, finding a place within academia, staying up to date with the latest research, communicating research to wider audiences and navigating life after PhD. Ema Talam and Jon Fairburn outline five ways in which social media, and in particular Twitter, can make all the difference to PhD research at a time when regular academic life has been severely disrupted.

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Privacy settings on social networking services

Social media can be both a personal and public space; this brings some professional and reputational challenges for teachers. We've put together a privacy fact file for nine of the most popular social networks to help you manage how you are seen online.

We give you a rundown of the default privacy settings of each service, let you know whether the information you share on it is public or can be found using search engines, we highlight any features of the social network that might be of particular concern to teachers and provide some practical tips.

Open and closed social networking services

As short hand, we see all social networks as either open or closed:

Open networks, such as Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, are designed for you to communicate with the whole world. They don't make it easy to restrict who sees your posts although it is possible to have some control over this. In general, when using these networks you should assume everyone can see everything you post, everything you like or favourite, and everyone you are connected to.

Closed networks like WhatsApp, Snapchat and to some degree Facebook are used by groups of friends or connections to share updates, photos, thoughts etc. with each other. While most of the stuff you post on these networks isn't accessible to everyone, some of it is. Unintended sharing of personal information in public spaces can have serious consequences. You need to be particularly vigilant when using these networks.

It's important to remember that no matter how open or closed you think a social network service, as soon as you share a post you lose control over who sees and has access to this information. This is because it is very easy to copy and re-share any content shared digitally.

Facebook Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Closed

Default privacy settings: When new users post on Facebook, the post is shared with friends only, by default. However, a lot of other Facebook activity (including personal information, friends and Likes) is public by default.

Information that will always be public: Your profile picture, cover picture and name will always be public, no matter your privacy settings. Any network or public group you're a member of will also be public.

Who can find you? You are always searchable within Facebook. So long as a person knows your name he/she will be able to find you. You can opt out of having your profile listed in search engine results. However, by default, your profile is included in search results.

Tips for teachers on Facebook: View your profile as public to check that you're not sharing too much information. As your profile and cover pictures are always public, it's important that these are appropriate and okay for anyone to see. Adjust your privacy settings and the audience for your posts if you're worried about sharing too much. You should also check the privacy settings for your Likes, otherwise your students will be able to see that you're into Aran Island Naked Bog Snorkelling.

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to being friends with students on Facebook. Teachers should check with school management if they are unsure of school policy. The Teaching Council doesn't give specific guidance on this topic though it does say that teachers should "ensure that any communication with pupils/ students, colleagues, parents, school management and others is appropriate, including communication via electronic media, such as e-mail, texting and social networking sites".

Avoid posting about school on Facebook. Generally it's not okay to talk about pupils, parents or colleagues in a public forum. It could damage the reputation of the school and land you in a lot of hot water.

Twitter Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Open

Default privacy settings: Everything is public! Your name, username, profile picture and posts, time you send tweets and favourites are all automatically public. The only exceptions are your email address and any direct messages you send, which are kept private.

Information that will always be public: Your name, username, profile and cover pictures, your bio and location as well as the number of followers, tweets and favourites you have amassed are always public.

Who can find you? You are always searchable within Twitter, even if you have a protected account. There's also no way of preventing search engines from linking to your account, although protected tweets won't be accessible. As of Feb 2015 tweets will be more visible in Google searches.

Tips for teachers on Twitter: To limit who can see you your tweets you can alter your settings so that your Twitter account is protected and you get to approve all followers. However, anyone can mention you in a tweet, even if you have a protected account. Also, tweets sent before you protected your account can still be found throughGoogle.

It's a good idea to check regularly who is following you. Don't automatically return the favour of following people who follow you. There are lots of glamour models/escorts out there who will spam you any chance they get! Remember, you can block people if you're not comfortable having them follow your Twitter feed.

Instagram Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Open

Default privacy settings: Account is default public. This means that your username and photos can be seen by anyone, by default.

Information that will always be public: Your profile picture and user name will always be public. If you choose to provide a name and bio these will also be public.

Who can find you? Your images may appear in search results if you've logged into your account using a web viewer (e.g. some of the collage or filter apps created by third parties). Otherwise, your profile will be indexed but search engines aren't allowed to index or link to your photos.

Tips for teachers on Instagram: As with Twitter, you can choose to make your Instagram account private. However, Instagram makes it very easy to share images on other social networking services. When you share images on these services they will be publicly accessible to anyone who has access to the link, even if your Instagram account is private. Make sure you're happy for anyone to see the pictures you post on Instagram. Given how easy it is to copy digital photos, you never know who will end up seeing your Instagram posts.

Be very careful when posting pictures of other people. Make sure that colleagues are happy for a picture to be shared online before posting it. Extra precautions need to be taken when posting pictures of students. If the students are minors, you will need the permission of their parents. Names, especially full names, should not be used in captions. It names are used they need to be kept separate from images.

Tumblr Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Open

Default privacy settings: Posts, blogs, pages, and your username are all visible to the public by default. Liking, reblogging, and replying are also public actions, by default.

Information that will always be public: Your profile picture, url and title of your blog are always public. A primary blog is public-facing, so you can't prevent someone from looking at it, following it, viewing pages on it, or accessing its RSS feed.

Who can find you? Content published and shared publicly is accessible to everyone, including search engines, and you may lose any privacy rights you might have regarding that content. People that know your email address can find your blogs.

Tips for teachers on Tumblr: Secondary blogs can be password protected. This means you can limit the audience of these particular blogs.

WhatsApp Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Closed

Default privacy settings: WhatsApp will automatically set your Privacy Settings to allow any WhatsApp user to view your read receipts, last seen, profile photo and status.

Information that will always be public: Your online status will always be available. There are some workarounds for this but officially your online status will always be available.

Who can find you? A user must have your phone number to be able to search for you on WhatsApp.

Viber Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Closed

Default privacy settings: Share 'online' status, send 'seen' status and share 'using app' status are all on by default. Your photo and name are not compulsory but will be available to people if they have your number or if they are included in the same group chat as you.

Who can find you? A user must have your phone number to be able to search for you on WhatsApp.

Snapchat Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Closed

Default privacy settings: The default setting is that only friends can send you snaps and see your Snapstory.

Information that will always be public: Your username is always public. Users can always see if you've read snaps.

Who can find you? Anyone with your username or who has you in their phonebook can search for you.

Tips for teachers on Snapchat: People can send you snaps/add you but you won't receive the messages unless you receive messages from Everyone. Go to your settings to adjust this option.

Pinterest Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Open

Default privacy settings: Pinterest boards and profiles are default public. This means that anyone can browse through the images and articles you've saved to your boards. It is possible to make boards secret to prevent people from seeing your Pinterest activity.

Information that will always be public: Your profile page, including your name and picture are always public. Your followers, following, favourites are also always public.

Who can find you? By default, all Pinterest profiles are listed on Google. You can choose to hide your profile from search. However your name can still come up and be linked to certain pins.

Tips for teachers on Pinterest: It is possible to make boards secret to prevent people from seeing your Pinterest activity. If you've used Facebook to find friends on Pinterest an automatic link to your Facebook profile will appear at the top of your profile. Also be careful about the boards you collaborate on. These will appear attached to your profile so you need to be happy with the quality of content that is added to them.

LinkedIn Privacy Fact File

Type of social network: Closed

Default privacy settings: Most information (connections, work summary, education and past jobs) is default public. LinkedIn also tracks and lets users know when you've visited their pages, by default. Activity Broadcasts (any LinkedIn activity/updates) are also automatically available to any of your connections and may be highlighted on their homepages. Your photo is available to anyone in your network (1 st and 2 nd degree connections) by default.

Information that will always be public: While you can choose not to have a public LinkedIn profile, your private profile is always available to view by other LinkedIn users. A change of photo, new connections, following companies, group activity and liking content can never be hidden.

Who can find you? By default your public profile is indexed by search engines. You can choose to hide your profile from search, however your profile will always be available to search by Linkedin users.

Tips for teachers on LinkedIn: While you can choose not to have a public LinkedIn profile, this move doesn't necessarily protect your privacy. Anyone can sign up for a LinkedIn profile and once they have done this they will have access to your full private profile. The only way to hide information on your private profile is to remove it altogether.

Another point to note is that once you connect with someone, that person will have access to your email address. Messages sent to and from that person will appear to come and be sent from individual email addresses and not from LinkedIn. To avoid unwanted emails it's important for teachers not to accept every request to connect and to check out the person, before connecting. If the person doesn't have many connections or is only connected to a small number of staff in your school, it could be a student on a phishing trip.

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Protecting your Privacy on 9 Popular Social Networks -

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Social media can be both a personal and public space; this brings some professional and reputational challenges for teachers. We've put together a privacy fact file for nine of the most popular social networks to help you manage how you are seen online.

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Gather - an app to support virtual conferences, poster displays etc

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Gather - an app to support virtual conferences, poster displays etc

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Gather gives distributed teams a digital space that brings everyone together.

The in-person moments you've been missing

Everything remote teams need to get work done

Premium support
(Premium Office plans only)

Why remote employees love Gather

Build a culture your remote team loves

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Work remotely side-by-side in digital Spaces that make virtual interactions more human.

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Becoming a Digital Citizen - Online Course

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Become a more informed digital citizen and engage with debate about what is appropriate in the modern world of social media

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Altmetric - for measuring social media engagement

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Altmetric - for measuring social media engagement

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Track and demonstrate the reach and influence of your work to key stakeholders

Who's saying what about your published work?

Knowing who's talking about your research and what they're saying is crucial in today's increasingly online world. Ensuring your work is being accurately represented and interpreted, as well as getting to the right people at the right time, all plays an important factor its broader impact.

With altmetrics, you can start to track this information as soon as your research is published - meaning no waiting around for citations, and the chance to engage directly with the audiences who are interested in your work.

"Thanks Altmetric for giving me something concrete to report in the "most important contributions" section of my grant application!"

- Alexis Carere, Genetic Counselor & Post-doctoral Fellow in Epidemiology

Make altmetrics work for you

Monitor and track early engagement

Altmetric begin collating the online mentions and shares of your research across the sources we track as soon as it's published, meaning you can get almost immediate feedback on how it's being received long before any citation data becomes available.

Showcase influence

Funders and review panels increasingly want to see evidence of the broader influence and impacts of your work. Altmetric data can help you demonstrate this - for example was your work commented on by a thought-leader in your field, did it receive media attention in specific geographies, has it been referenced in public policies?

The qualitative data provided by Altmetric can help you uncover all of this - and offers much more than the numbers alone can tell you. (Check out our new guide to including Altmetric data in your NIH Biosketch!)

Identify the most effective channels

One of the benefits of the data Altmetric provide is that it can be used to benchmark against other research published in your field, meaning you can see where the work of your peers is gaining traction - useful for informing best-practice strategies for future outreach activity.

Check out the 'score in context' tab of your details page to see how the attention surrounding your research compares to others.

Seek out collaborators

You might find that your work (or other research in your field) is being talked about in unexpected places! Dig into the details page to see who is talking about your work and what they're saying - you might even uncover some potential future collaborators!

Tools for researchers

It's quick and easy to start exploring the Altmetric data for your publications - here's an overview of the tools we provide for individual researchers:

Altmetric Bookmarklet

This free browser plug-in lets you instantly see the Altmetric data for any publication with a DOI. Click on the donut to view the full details page for each output.
Learn more

Altmetric badges

The Altmetric badges enable you to showcase the online attention surrounding your research, and it's free to embed them in your individual profile or publications page in just a few simple steps.
Learn more

Altmetric API

The Altmetric API is free to use for research purposes! You can use it to query our entire database (which currently contains attention data for over 9 million research outputs).
Learn more

How are other researchers using this data?

Have a look at our case studies to see how scholars around the world are making use of our tools:

Terrie Moffitt: Demonstrating the full picture of research impact

Terrie Moffitt, Professor of Psychology at Duke University, talks about how she users altmetrics to identify and evidence the online activity surrounding her research.

Read this case study →

Ashley Casey: Disseminating and tracking research using altmetrics data

Ashley Casey, Senior Lecturer in Pedagogy Loughborough University, discusses how he uses Altmetric data to disseminate and track his work, and why this is a necessity when publishing research.

Read this case study →

See the altmetrics for all of your research

The Altmetric Explorer for Institutions is a site-license access subscription platform that enables you and your colleagues to browse and report on all of the attention data for research published by your faculty, and to benchmark this alongside the other items in the Altmetric database.

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Track and demonstrate the reach and influence of your work to key stakeholders Knowing who's talking about your research and what they're saying is crucial in today's increasingly online world. Ensuring your work is being accurately represented and interpreted, as well as getting to the right people at the right time, all plays an important factor its broader impact.

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Blog posts on using social media in academia

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Blog posts on using social media in academia

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Social Media for Research: Networking and Sharing

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Social Media for Research: Networking and Sharing

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Skip to Main Content

It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

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LibGuides: Social media for research: Networking and sharing

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Skip to Main Content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

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Social media opens up new forms of communication and dissemination, provides a powerful means for researchers to improve visibility and offers new opportunities to conduct research.

However, engaging with social media also carries risks and presents challenges, such as online harassment, misrepresentation and public embarrassment. One of the most difficult things to judge in the online world is how to balance your personal and professional use of social media. It is important to consider how your activity reflects on both your professional integrity and the reputation of the University of York. Remember what is posted online can be used by others.

It is up to you how you approach social media and what you aim to get out of it, but the guidelines below will help you maximise its potential while limiting the risks.

Further reading

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‌Social media guidelines for researchers

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Social media opens up new forms of communication and dissemination, provides a powerful means for researchers to improve visibility and offers new opportunities to conduct research. However, engaging with social media also carries risks and presents challenges, such as online harassment, misrepresentation and public embarrassment.

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It's easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of choice regarding social media platforms. It's much better to be active on one or two sites than to have neglected profiles all over the internet. How do you choose where to start, and where to go from there?

Community is everything

In most aspects of our lives, we tend to choose tools based on how good they are and how much we like them. With social media though, we first have to think about what we want to achieve: what is the tool for? And because social media is all about interaction, we have to think about the community.

Community is everything with online tools like these: being present in the places where the discussions and interactions are taking place which are most pertinent to you, your interests, and your aims. If the community you need is on Twitter, then you need to be on Twitter too, to meet your aims, even if you find Twitter's 140 character limit too limiting and hate the idea of having to simplify your ideas like that. Conversely, if you absolutely love the look and functionality of Pinterest, but the community you're interested in doesn't tend to go there, it's probably going to be a waste of your time to use it.

Of course, you don't have to go anywhere. It might make career sense to go on a particular platform, but there are compromises attached to any platform and you might not be prepared to make them. We all have to choose what we're comfortable with.

Searching and testing

Where a platform has an open search facility, search for keywords that relate closely to your interests. If there are people talking sense, it may be worth setting up a profile and joining in with that community. If no one is talking about your preferred topics at all, it may not be worth investing any time on that platform.

Sometimes searching isn't enough and you need to try a platform out to get a sense of the community. It may be worth setting up a profile and listening in for a couple of weeks, then starting to contribute. If it seems like your community is there, put more time into it. If it doesn't seem like your community is there, don't be afraid to pull the plug: delete your profile and move on.

Platforms by purpose

What are you trying to achieve, and which platforms are most appropriate to help you achieve it?

Twitter is great for day to day conversation, for keeping up with news in your field or industry as it happens, for keeping in touch with interesting people you met at events but don't quite feel ready to email yet, for campaigning to try and get support for a particular issue.
Researchers Guide to Twitter
Blogs are brilliant for presenting ideas in more depth, for greeting the people Googling you (people are Googling you) with something more representative of your views than the job history on your LinkedIn page, and for being a general HQ for all your social media presences.
Blogging tips
The near-ubiquitous Facebook is good for keeping in touch with friends old and new, or for sharing organisational information to a large captive audience, though it can also ride rather high in your search results, so it's probably a good idea to set your privacy settings equally high.

Instagram is often a more personal medium, good for those who want to engage a little more with their life and interests rather than just their professional identity.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site that, at its most basic, can function as an online CV, but, if managed carefully, can also help you build a professional reputation through a network of contacts and endorsements. Like Facebook, it tends to feature quite high in search results, but unlike Facebook, it's a link you might actually want a potential employer to see (assuming you've kept your profile up to date).
LinkedIn for students
Leeds Uni LinkedIn videos
Slideshare is underrated and amazing for sharing a visual taster of ideas.

YouTube is great for presenting information in an engaging way - as long as that information isn't just stuff people could just as easily read.

There are a host of others - far too many to go through individually. All of them can be used both professionally and personally, or both. In many cases, social media works best when it's not strictly and exclusively either one of those, but a balance, perhaps slightly in favour of professional. As long as you think about what you want to achieve, you can use it in whatever way works best - but above all, remember it's all about community. It may be that in a way you don't have to choose the 'right' tool -- your community will already have chosen it for you.

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Subject Guides: Skills Guides: Social media

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It's easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of choice regarding social media platforms. It's much better to be active on one or two sites than to have neglected profiles all over the internet. How do you choose where to start, and where to go from there?

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How to boost your academic LinkedIn profile

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How to boost your academic LinkedIn profile

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Your LinkedIn profile is often the first digital impression of you. Describe your work with the right words. Avoid generic descriptive adjectives, which are most used on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn search algorithm favours skills and talent, so make sure you are using SEO as leverage. Think of keywords used in your profile as hashtags, which will help you build up your presence in LinkedIn searches and suggestions.

Think of your headline as an elevator pitch. It is meant to stimulate interest rather than inform about your current job title. Instead of using a generic headline such as "Lecturer at Monsters University," be more specific and decriptive. A good formula for a successful headline is 1 keyword + 3 value propositions: "University lecturer with a passion for undergraduate education and applied research."

2. Don't be afraid to brag

Move the Publications section of your profile towards the top, possibly right after the section. Listing all your academic achievements is probably not very relevant, so make sure to prioritise most recent or most relevant publications to the top. On LinkedIn you get to choose which parts of your work are most current and important. Also, find existing connections in your network, including current and former colleagues. Academic professionals have wide ranging connections throughout the world. An easy way to find old connections is through Company pages or Alumni groups.

3. Add eye-catching content

You will be able to add content to most of the sections on your LinkedIn profile. This is a good opportunity to showcase your publications, awards, industry projects and course materials. LinkedIn Slideshare and Pulse are good platforms for sharing your thoughts and ideas. In addition to adding your own content, both of the platforms are extremely useful for finding successful individuals in your are of research or industry work. Systematically look for skills and content that is valued in your area of interest for a bit of benchmarking.

4. Bring value to your network (that includes students as well)

Be generous when recommending and endorsing colleagues and former students. Recommendations given out by you can also be seen on your profile, so make sure that you are genuine and supportive. Do not give out recommendations if you do not feel comfortable, since they are linked to your personal LinkedIn profile.

Building online social value can bring real rewards in the offline world. Through your academic LinkedIn profile you can find new opportunities, build professional relationships, keep up to date on specific industries and find recommendations and mentors. Use your online presence as a competitive advantage with a dash of planned serendipity.
About the author: Laura Sivula is an advocate for digital design education at the Aalto University Information Technology Program and a speaker/writer trying to demystify LinkedIn.

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How to boost your academic LinkedIn profile

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1. Show your expert status Your LinkedIn profile is often the first digital impression of you.

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Ready to make your academic personal website?

Creating a personal academic website is a big project, but well-worth it for faculty and researchers. It's the best way to manage your online presence long-term. And, your academic web portfolio can showcase your

There are many benefits of academic websites for professors, grad students, and researchers like you.

I'm Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to my blog/podcast, The Social Academic. Here I share advice articles and interviews with awesome people like you.

Today we're talking about how to make your personal academic website.
Having a personal website is great because it

shares your professional accomplishments

helps your colleagues and other scholars in your field connect with you and your work

attracts students who are interested in what you're teaching (they'll be able to understand what your classes will be like from a good teaching section)

allows people to get in touch without having to search through a dense faculty profile

provides an engaging way for funders and publishers to better understand you

helps people develop longer-term connections with your work

connects people with your public social media accounts (including academic or research-based ones)

Most people I've spoken with say the process of making a personal website creates a better understanding of the impact of their own work.

There are so many benefits of a personal academic website.

But a website isn't right for everyone. It does take time and money.

And not just once. A website is an ongoing project that needs regular updating.

Not sure if you're ready? Be sure to check out this guide to avoid common pitfalls like lack of time, training, or funds.

If you're sure a website isn't for you, that's totally okay! My top recommendation is to update your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a great way to network with your community.

For the rest of you, here is my step-by-step guide to creating a personal academic website. If you need more guidance, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post to learn about my academic websites training (with live support).

7 steps to take your website from start to launch

Creating a personal academic website is a long-journey. It's definitely not a 10-minute project like some articles claim.

A website is a multi-day project. This guide should help you move forward efficiently.

1. Create your content

2. Pick a domain name and site title

3. Choose a website host

4. It's time for set-up

5. Preview your site

6. It's time to go live

7. Share your website

Communicating with the public, and with your scholarly audiences, is hard work. Following this guide will help you get your academic website from start to launch smoothly.

Let's get started.

Step #1 | Create your content

A good website thinks about the content first. So step 1 in creating your personal website is deciding what you'll include.

I bet you thought we were going to start with choosing a host, or domain name. Nope.

How do you want to structure your website?

The structure and organization of your academic website determines the content you'll need to create.

If you want to share a lot of information, you can have more pages:

About page with your academic bio and headshot

Research page

Current project

Research outcomes

Teaching page

Course descriptions

Syllabi

Teaching Statement/Philosophy

Publications page

Abstracts or descriptions

Publication links

Speaking Engagements page

Contact page

Links to your social media profiles

Blog

If you want a simpler website, a smaller structure is recommended:

About page with your academic bio and headshot

Link to your CV

Links to your social media profiles

The simplest website structure is just 1-page. But it isn't right for everyone.

The size of your website and how much content you include, will change depending on what you want to share.

That's why thinking about site content and structure is the kind of thing you want to plan before you get started.

Gather written content for your website

Once you've decided on a structure and what you want to include, I highly recommend you write your content before creating your website.

Make a list of the pages you need to write content for, i.e.

About Page

Academic bio: 300-500 words

Research description

Research Page

Abstract of current project(s)

Longer description of research interests

Important outcomes or research highlights

Publications Page
Publication details (not in standard citation format), preferably with an abstract or description

Then, write the content for each page to complete this step.

Need content inspiration? Be sure to check out my post with website content ideas.

Edit your content for the web

Most people don't write for the web automatically. Academics tend to use

complicated or dense sentences

jargon / specialized terms

long paragraphs

no headings (or few headings)

And these are all no no's for web writing.

For best practices, edit the content you have to

use simple sentences

define jargon and specialized terms

break your writing into short paragraphs (less than 5 sentences)

choose headings that help website visitors skim the page to find what they're looking for

Photography and headshots

Choosing photography now falls under collecting content. You'll need 2 things:

cover photo (also called a splash image, header photo, etc.)

headshot

I'm using the word cover photo, because it's a term you may have heard of for your social media profile. Basically, a cover photo is a large photo at the top of your profile (or in this case website) that will be there all the time. Or that is kind of like a theme photo that represents your website.

If you like taking photos, you may have one already that works for you.

Many people choose stock images for their cover photo.

For your headshot, you don't need to go out and do a professional photo shoot. If you have photos from your work then that's a good option.

Selfies are a good option for your headshot too.

You just want your photo to be friendly, like of your smiling face.

And try not to have distractions in the background.

Are photos required? No, but it really does help. So if you're uncomfortable with photos, consider making an avatar instead.

Whichever you photos choose, you need to have the rights or licence to share them online.

Step #2 | Pick a domain name and site title

Once you've gathered/written all your content, you want to pick a domain name. And you want to do this before choosing a host because it's literally going to be the 1st thing most of them ask you to do.

Your domain name is your main website URL, or web address.

For instance, the full URL to this page is https:// theacademicdesigner.com/2020/how-to-make-an-academic-website

So the domain name for the website is theacademicdesigner.com.

Your site title is what your website is called, in my case, The Academic Designer, which is the name of my company.

For a personal website, my top recommendation for choosing your website domain and title is to use your full name.

My personal website is jennifervanalstyne.com (site name: Jennifer van Alstyne).

Using your full name will help your page rank in Google and other search engines.

Afterall, the keyword most people will use to find your website when searching, is your name.

So, decide on a domain name and website title.

And, an easy way to check if your domain name is in use is by typing it into your navigation search bar. If it's taken a website will show up, and you may need to add a middle initial or keyword (i.e. MatthewMPincus.com, or JenniferVanAlstynePoet.com).

Typically if a domain name is taken but not in active use, it will tell you how you can purchase it.

Step #3 | Choose a website host

What website host is best for you will depend on your budget and technical skills.

Oh, also your time. I almost forgot that one.

So there are 3 things to consider when choosing a website host:

What's your budget like?

Depending on where you end up hosting your website, the full annual cost can be anywhere from $0 to around $175 USD per year.

This is going to sound harsh, but unless you have coding/technical skills for web design...

Or you have the time and interest to learn...

You're going to want to spend some money.

So how tech-y are you?

So how good are your technical skills? If you know basic HTML and CSS, a self-hosted WordPress is a free option you may consider.

If you use any of the other coding languages used for web design, you probably already know how you want to build your website and you just needed some guidance on the content.

But if you're like most academics, you probably haven't had web design or coding training. And that's okay!

There are options for you that don't require a lot of technical ability:

a managed WordPress host like WordPress.com, Bluehost, WPEngine (top recommendation)

SquareSpace

Wix.com (not recommended, but better than other drag-and-drop editors)

I do not recommend hosting a personal academic website through your university or affiliation, Academia.edu, MLA Commons, your scholarly organizations, etc.

And that's for a lot of reasons, but mainly these three:

you should own and have full control of your website (including the option to move to another host)

you need the ability to have good search engine optimization (SEO), and many of those larger sites are not well-indexed by search engines like Google

if your research, work, or interests change you want your website to be able to adapt to you long-term

My top choice for academic websites is WordPress.com, a managed WordPress host. For most people the Personal plan is great at $4/mo. But if you want more control over themes and look, Premium is $8/mo.

The benefit of using a managed WordPress host is that they take care of things like security and updates for you.

Got time on your hands? Start thinking about content and technical updates now

A website does take up a lot of time during creation, but not everyone thinks about ongoing maintenance.

You'll want to update your content on an annual basis, if not more often (i.e. when you add a line to your CV).

But you'll also need to make sure any plugins and website updates are taken care of on the technical end too.

If your website gets a virus or gets hacked, can you take time out of your busy schedule to deal with it? You've got classes to teach, research to do, articles to write.

That's why paying for hosting that includes security and support is your best option.

And you want to be sure to plan in advance by putting website updates in your calendar now.

Step #4 | It's time for set-up

Once you've chosen a host, it's time to set up your website.

This is an exciting day, because when you have the content written already, your website will come together fast.

Choose a theme for your website

Most website hosts have themes or looks to choose from for the design of your website.

When choosing a theme for your website look for these 3 things:

mobile responsive (your website adapts from desktop to mobile screens well)

clean design, free from distractions

accessibility-ready (depending on your host)

Once you've chosen a theme, you can usually edit things like font and color.

For font, choose a sans serif font (letters without the little feet).

In terms of color, you want something with a high contrast for easy readability. Dark text on a light background is preferred.

Place your content

Once you've selected a theme, you're ready to place your content.

Depending on how big your website is, you'll need to know how to do these things

Note that sometimes the cover photo, or what some hosts call a splash image, is in a different site-level section. Where to find that setting is website host-specific.

You may also need to know how to add and edit these site-level items

Most website hosts have well-written guides you can use to help you perform these actions.

Titles, tags, and other metadata

When you upload photos or other media to your website, it's important to check that the metadata and alt tags are descriptive.

For my splash image of succulents:

title of the photo (Succulents)

name of the photo (succulents.jpg)

description of the photo (website header green echeveria succulents)

Do this for all photos and images.

Step #5 | Preview your site

Once your content is placed, preview your website.

You want to check your content for

And be sure to preview your website on different screens if you have the option

If you are able, try your website on different browsers (i.e. Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari).

I usually suggest asking a friend or family member to check your site for you as well.

We often miss our own simple errors. And, you may learn if something is confusing or hard to find.

For instance, you'd be surprised how many academic websites I've come across where it's difficult to find the name of the person who it's about. Seriously.

Step #6 | It's time to go live

Okay, so you've previewed your website. And you've asked a friend to look it over.

It's time to take your website live!

Please note that if you sell anything on your website including consulting or editing services, you are required by law to have a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions page.

This is also true if you are using Google Analytics or any other tracking pixels or tools.

Do not take your website live until you have these things.

If that is not the case for you, or if you've added those policies...

Go ahead and Publish your website.

Congratulations! You have a personal academic website ready to be shared with the world.

Step #7 | Share your website

Once your website is live, you need to share it. In the next couple of weeks, Google will crawl your website (unless you tell it not to, but don't do that). Once that happens you're website will start showing up when people Google your name.

But that shouldn't be the only way people find your website.

Announce your website on social media. Invite people to check it out.

Update your social media profiles to include your website address.

And, don't forget to add your new website address to your email signature.

Well that's the whole process, step-by-step. Good luck setting up your personal academic website.

Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back and check the steps.
Check out my recent YouTube LIVE talking about how to get started with your personal website.
Next time on The Social Academic, I'm talking more about managing Your online presence for faculty and researchers.

Want more guides and articles like this? Subscribe to The Social Academic blog today to get updates right to your inbox.

Get training and live support while you create your website

Creating content for your academic website is the biggest step. And the one people tend to struggle with the most. That's why I created an online training to help.

Not everyone needs my 1:1 done-for-you services. If you've found this guide, you're likely ready to create your faculty or researcher website yourself. And that's great!

How does guidance throughout the whole process of creating your website sound?
Get your content written and your site launched with my personal academic websites course.
Not only do you get the web writing training and templates you need...

You get email support and access to my monthly live office hours via Zoom so we can look over your site in real time.

And did I mention lifetime updates to the course?
This training will teach you how to

plan and build a personal academic website

write a clear academic bio

host documents like your CV

showcase and link to publications

share conferences and speaking engagements

create graphics and write content for your site

share your accomplishments

Get access to the full course, 6 weeks of email support, and monthly office hours.

Jennifer van Alstyne is a Peruvian-American poet and public relations consultant. She founded The Academic Designer, LLC to help academics, researchers, and writers control their online presence and share their work with the world.

She holds a B.A. from Monmouth University in English, and an M.F.A. from Naropa University in Writing & Poetics where she was the Jack Kerouac Fellow. Jennifer also holds an M.A. from University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Literature and Cultural Studies where she was one of four master's fellows and a finalist for the Outstanding Master's Graduate Award.

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Creating a personal academic website is a big project, but well-worth it for faculty and researchers. It's the best way to manage your online presence long-term. And, your academic web portfolio can showcase your There are many benefits of academic websites for professors, grad students, and researchers like you.

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Developing an online presence as an academic - blog

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Developing an online presence as an academic - blog

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Salma Patel has been on a whistle-stop tour of academic social media channels. Here she shares her simple, practical tips for academics who want to start engaging with the wider world through social media. I'm an academic and desperately need an online presence because I want to start engaging with the public and disseminate my research online - where do I start?
1. LinkedIn: Create a LinkedIn profile. This is really easy to do and doesn't require you to talk to anyone.

Register an account and fill in your details.

LinkedIn allows you to search through your mail to find any if your contacts on LinkedIn. Connect to all those that come up.

2. Academia: Create an academia.edu profile. This again is very straight forward to do, and doesn't require any specialist skills.

3. Twitter: Once you've created a LinkedIn and Academia.edu profile, let's move to Twitter. Twitter will require more work, patience and a sense of humour. You can start off by either attending a twitter workshop/social network surgery, asking a friend/colleague to quickly show you how twitter works or you can read this LSE guide to twitter.

Create a twitter account using your real name.

Twitter will ask you to place a very short profile of yourself. You can either keep it really simple [Job Title at Uni of X] or make it more quirky. Don't worry too much about this at this stage (you can change it later), but what will really help is to have a nosey around other academics on twitter.

Start following people on twitter. Again you can find followers using your email address. Another really good way to find followers is to find someone on twitter who has very similar academic interests to you. Now look through who that person is following, and follow those people.

Once you start following people, they are normally alerted and they may start following you back if your profile looks interesting to them (so make it interesting). Also place a few interesting tweets out before you start following people that don't know you personally.

The key to getting followers on twitter is to Engage! Start talking to people, if you see a tweet of interest reply to it. If you see a conversation going in between two people, butt in and join in (as far as I know it isn't rude in the twitter world to do that). When you are starting off this may be difficult to do, but it is not difficult to help people. If someone asks something, take those extra few minutes out from your busy schedule and help them. Trust me, you will see a return.

Another really quick way to get followers is to take part in twitter chats (twitter chat schedule). There may not be twitter chats in your area of research (not to worry, you can always consider starting off your own chat in the future), but you can always take part in #phdchat which runs every Wednesday evening at 7pm

What shall I tweet about? Have a look at this prezi or article which looks at 1o ways researchers use twitter. Then have a look at what other academics are tweeting about on twitter, and if you are really stuck put your name down for this online webcast.

4. Blogging: Once you have familiarised yourself with Twitter and have plenty more to talk about, you can think about blogging. With blogging there are a few practical things to consider:

1. Blog name: The name of the blog depends on what you plan to blog about. If you plan to blog about a specific area, then you could keep your blog's name related to that. If you plan to blog about a multitude of themes, you could have a made up name or you could name your blog/website by your own name, and as well placing your profile on there, you could place your blog on there too. I have seen academics do both.

Please note: If you have a very common name, and really want to be at the top of Google ranking (number one) when someone searchers your name, you may want to consider keeping your blog name your own name. If you have name that isn't as common and you blog regularly on a theme based blog, you may still come at the top of Google when searched by your name.

2. Where do I blog? You could blog on an already existing blog (such as at your university or a research group) or you could start your own blog.

For your own blog, if you want to set it up yourself then you have two options. You can blog on wordpress/blogspot or any other blog provider (maybe even an internal university blog provider). For WordPress (the most popular), register an account on wordpress.com and start blogging. Your blog website will be: [name selected].wordpress.com

The disadvantage of using this is there is a limit to how far you can customize and there are also a limited amount of themes you can use. If you have some time I would recommend using wordpress to power your own website, and very simply this is how you would do it:

Purchase your own website name and hosting. This will cost between £10-£20 a year if you have a good look around. You can check here whether the domain name you are thinking of is available here. After you have found your domain name purchase your domain name and hosting from a hosting provider, but please ensure they support wordpress as it will make your life easier.

Install wordpress on your website.

Find a wordpress theme that you like. You can either buy one or find a free one. Use Google to find one.

Setup an about page for your own profile and meanwhile have a good look around other academic's blog/websites.

Once it is all setup start blogging and spreading your posts through Twitter and LinkedIn!

5. Other Engagement Tools
There are other platforms you can use to help you engage, such as curation tools. I would recommend you start using them once you have at least 1-3 setup. To quote from a recently published article on this blog:

Curation and sharing of content
Curation and sharing platforms such as Delicious, SlideShare, Pinterest, Scoop.it, Pearltrees, Bundlr, Paper.li and Storify, as well as referencing tools such as Mendeley, Citeulike and Zotero, allow academics to easily gather and present information and, importantly, to then make the information public and share it with others online. On SlideShare you can share your Powerpoint presentations and the referencing tools allow you to gather lists of references on specific topics and then share these with others. Several of these tools, including Pinterest, Bundlr and Storify, allow you to insert your own comments or analysis on the material you have gathered.

Don't be afraid to try out new platforms and ditch them if they don't work for you.
6. A few other specific things you could do to get a stronger online presence and get some followers.
1. Contribute to an existing blog in your field. An example is this Impact of Social Sciences Blog, The Guardian Higher Education Network, or if those seem too time consuming or you feel you can't contribute much to those areas, you can write your quick viva story for PhD Viva and other such websites.
2. Take part in#phdchat. You'll definitely get some followers and plus as a supervisor/academic/ex-PhD student, PhD students will really appreciate your presence, advice and contribution.
3. Contribute as a panelist to the Guardian Higher Education Live Chats (they normally run on a Friday afternoon). They normally recruit through their twitter account or drop them an email.
Note: This article gives the views of theauthor(s), and not the position of the Impact of Social Sciences blog, nor of the London School of Economics.

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I'm an academic and desperately need an online presence, where do I start?

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Salma Patel has been on a whistle-stop tour of academic social media channels. Here she shares her simple, practical tips for academics who want to start engaging with the wider world through social media. I'm an academic and desperately need an online presence because I want to start engaging with the public and disseminate my research online - where do I start?

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Tips for sharing your research using Twitter

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Tips for sharing your research using Twitter

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Experts weigh in on how to make the most of a tweet.

retrorocket/Getty

Social media can be a powerful tool in an academic's constant battle for attention among the 2.5 million papers published in English-language journals each year. But viral success stories are rare, and the precise combination of factors that create them are hard to pin down, let alone replicate.

One thing is certain, though: tweeting haphazardly into the ether is not the answer.

As trends from data spanning Twitter's first decade start to emerge, so too do the elements of a strategic approach. Here are 10 tips for tweeting about research to make an impact.
1. Don't be afraid to promote your own work.
Twitter is not a place to be shy. You are the best advocate for your work, and self-promotion is a proven way to drive research dissemination.

A paper presented earlier this month at the CHEST Congress 2019 in Thailand by researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada found that when authors tweeted about their own work, they saw as much as a 3.5-fold increase in tweets about their studies that year from other people, compared with authors who did not tweet about their studies at all.

This means if you're tweeting about your research, there's a good chance others will be, too.

"Papers can only get cited if scientists know about them," says Tom Finch, an ecologist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, who has investigated how online mentions predict future citations in certain fields.

"Promoting research on Twitter seems like a good way of getting it in the back of people's minds, so when they come to write their own papers, it's likely that this could have a 'cause and effect' and increase the citation rate of your paper in the future."
2. Have a clear sense of purpose for why you are on Twitter.
It can be easy to get sucked in and waste too much time on Twitter, but the opposite is true, too - you could talk yourself out of using it at all because of the perceived time commitment.

But, as Mark Carrigan, digital sociologist at the University of Cambridge, advises, a strategic approach is best. Identify how your Twitter use connects to your research activity, and figure out how it can supplement or replace the things you already do.

"The novelty of these platforms poses all sorts of problems," says Carrigan. "There's no end to the time that you could put into them. I think it's necessary to have a clear sense of purpose, because it advances engagement and makes it easier to protect yourself from being sucked in, and using them in time-consuming, ineffective ways."
3. If you're going to tweet about something controversial, plan it out.
Depending on your area of research, controversy might be unavoidable.

As Carrigan advises, if you are working on a topic that is controversial or contested, you should plan your engagement around the very real possibility that it will attract backlash online. Obvious examples include genetically modified food and climate change.

"I think many academics, if not most, are able to slide beneath the radar, because the topics they're working on just don't attract attention," says Carrigan.

"If yours does, you need to plan with that in mind. You need to be very careful about sharing half-formed thoughts. You need to have a clear sense of whether you're doing this to talk to peers about work in progress and related issues, or are you doing this to reach a broad set of audiences?"
4. Tap into your community.
Twitter is a very open channel, but its accessibility belies the insular tendencies of the myriad micro-communities that thrive via hashtags like #rstats (statistics), #phdchat (lab life), and #cubing (Rubik's cube enthusiasts).

Depending on your field of research, these communities can be a major asset in drawing attention to your work.

A recent study by Finch and his colleagues investigating social media responses to ornithology papers found that Altmetrics - which measure attention received by a paper, including how many times it's viewed, downloaded, or mentioned on social media, in blogs, news articles, and elsewhere online - not only complement traditional measures of scholarly impact such as citations, but might also anticipate or even drive them.

Finch says the highly engaged community of researchers and bird enthusiasts following #ornithology likely play a big role in driving the visibility of new studies.

"We do have a strong community within ornithological academia, but I wonder if it's also due to the fact that there are so many members of the public who are also interested in birds - there are a lot of amateur naturalists," says Finch.

"We're in a lucky position in that we're linked to quite a large group of members of the public who are interested in our work."
5. The more you post, the more followers you'll attract.
Some people are better at engaging a large audience on social media than others, but when it comes to building your base, it's often just a numbers game, so make an effort to tweet regularly.

An analysis of 36 million Twitter profiles and 28 billion tweets by social media analytics company Beevolve concluded that:

users who had sent 1 to 1,000 tweets had an average of 51 to 100 followers;

users who had tweeted more than 10,000 times were followed on average by 1,000 to 5,000 users; and

users with more than 15,000 tweets had between 100,001 to 1 million followers.

Source: Beevolve

6. The more followers you have, the broader your audience.
Not every researcher wants to connect with the general public, so if your main goal is to simply communicate with your peers, you don't necessarily need a large Twitter presence. But to reach beyond academia on Twitter, you need to build a (relatively) solid following.

According to a 2018 study by Isabelle Côté from Simon Fraser University in Canada and Emily Darling from the University of Toronto, more than half of the average scientist's Twitter followers are other scientists.

But once their follower count hits 1,000 and above, their audiences tend to be more diverse, including more research and educational organisations, more members of media and the general public, and a small number of decision-makers.

Source: I. Côté and E. Darling/Facets

7. Use hashtags - wisely.
We don't recommend you throw any old hashtag onto any old tweet (#science and #biology likely won't get you very far), but hashtags can be an effective way to tap into an engaged community on Twitter.

Communities using #academictwitter, #phdchat and #scholarsunday are a close-knit, enthusiastic group, and being actively involved helps combat the isolation that comes from just starting out on Twitter (or perhaps returning from an extended break).

Because of my 11 months in twitter: I have co-authored a journal paper, won a grant worth AUD75k, learnt about #responsiblemetrics #DORA, got involved in increasing #diversityinSTEM, campaigned on #GenderPayGap, reached out to senior leadership team and built an extended family! https://t.co/mH4shfA6FF
- Dr Tanvir Hussain (@tanvir_h) December 4, 2018

Also be on the look-out for 'of the moment' hashtags that are relevant to your work. These spring up sporadically and invite a flurry of activity - and often plenty of media attention. Past examples include #bestcarcass, #doesitfart, and #ActualLivingScientist.
8. Take a cue from young researchers.
A paper recently presented at iConference 2019 at the University of Maryland in the US in April looking at why some studies are more popular on social media than others found that papers written by younger authors often had the highest Altmetric scores.

"The academic age of authors - the number of years since their first publication - is negatively correlated with Altmetric scores of the publications," says one of the team, Jiang Li, professor of information science at Nanjing University in China.

"This means that, for young scientists, their research tends to be more popular on social media."

Li suggests this is because young researchers are more likely to be using social media to promote their work than academics who have been publishing over several decades.
9. Take control of your research group's updates
University websites aren't known for their agility, so when a change occurs in your research group or you've got a position to fill, get it out into the world fast by posting it on Twitter.

As Piero Carninci, deputy director at the RIKEN Centre for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan, notes, scientists who post job vacancy information to social media can achieve a better response rate than those who rely entirely on their institute's recruiting process.

"Those who have a large number of followers can recruit much better when they post a job on their account - they get more applications," says Carninci.
10. Familiarise yourself with your institution's social media guidelines.
Most institutional guidelines for social media use are fairly straightforward, common sense policies, but it's worth familiarising yourself with yours, especially if you're considering a return to Twitter after a long hiatus. If you feel that the current guidelines are overly restrictive or out of date, speak up and get clarification - it's not unusual for guidelines to be written by those who aren't all that familiar with the platform.

The biggest misstep, says Carrigan, is when institutions wait for a PR crisis to occur and then rush out social media guidelines in response.

"There are some high-profile cases where guidelines have been issued in response to a crisis," says Carrigan. "When you write guidelines because something has already gone wrong, that's not going be good institutional strategy."
This article is one of a series of Nature Index articles about social media and academic practice. Hear more from Mark Carrigan on how academics and their institutions can bridge their social media cultural divide; and we look at why maintaining professional social media profiles can be so complicated.
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Experts weigh in on how to make the most of a tweet. retrorocket/Getty Social media can be a powerful tool in an academic's constant battle for attention among the 2.5 million papers published in English-language journals each year. But viral success stories are rare, and the precise combination of factors that create them are hard to pin down, let alone replicate.

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We're Not So Different - useful history research podcast

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We're Not So Different - useful history research podcast

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Linked In Tips: Including some specific to researchers

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Linked In Tips: Including some specific to researchers

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Webinar Trainings are available and can be customized to your audience.

Clients have included Harvard University, MIT, RISD, Tufts University, Children's Hospital, MCPHS, Simmons College, MassArt, Harvard Medical School, and the Career Counselors Consortium.

Contact us for additional details, rates, and upcoming availability.

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Webinar Trainings are available and can be customized to your audience. Clients have included Harvard University, MIT, RISD, Tufts University, Children's Hospital, MCPHS, Simmons College, MassArt, Harvard Medical School, and the Career Counselors Consortium. Contact us for additional details, rates, and upcoming availability.

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Why write a book on Twitter for scientists?

There are four ways to get your research known, but only only one of these is an option for every early career researcher:

1. Already be famous
2. Have a famous mentor
3. Repeatedly win the peer-review lottery
4. Actively contribute to social media
- Dan Quintana (@dsquintana) March 12, 2019

I believe that Twitter can provide extraordinary opportunities for scientists, regardless of their seniority, mentors, or institution. By actively contributing to Twitter, I've kept up-to-date with emerging methods, several doors have opened for research collaborations, and I've been introduced to a supportive community of like-minded scientists. Most important, I've received valuable feedback on my work and been able to share my research to people that would have not otherwise seen it. In fact, if it wasn't for Twitter I don't think I'd still be in academia.

I often give talks on Twitter because I've seen how much it can give early career scientists a leg-up in their careers. However, I've found that these talks are better suited for explaining why scientists should get involved with social media, rather than how to do it. So that I can focus more on the why during these talks, I've wanted to refer audiences to resources on how to use Twitter. However, I haven't been able to find any single source that includes all the important information that I think scientists on Twitter need to know.

So that's why I've written this book.

About me

I'm a research scientist at the University of Oslo, in the area of biological psychology. I was awarded my PhD in Psychology in 2013 at the University of Sydney. I now investigate how the hormone oxytocin influences how we think and feel. I'm also interested in cardiac psychophysiology and meta-science, which is the science of scientific practice. Find out more about my research on my website. As this is a book about Twitter, you will not be surprised to read that I tweet a fair bit.

I'm the co-host and producer of Everything Hertz, which is a podcast about methodology and scientific life in the biobehavioral sciences. We talk a lot about Twitter on this show, and its role in scientific practice. Many of our episode topics are also inspired by discussions on Twitter. You can also find me on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and my blog.

I live on an island in the Oslo fjord with my wife and two daughters.

How to cite this book

Quintana, D.S. (2020). Twitter for Scientists [eBook edition]. Retrieved from https://t4scientists.com/. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3707741

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There are four ways to get your research known, but only only one of these is an option for every early career researcher: 1. Already be famous 2. Have a famous mentor 3. Repeatedly win the peer-review lottery4.

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Free MOOC on Using Social Media for Business

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Free MOOC on Using Social Media for Business

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Hi, I'm Emer and I work in digital analytics. Welcome to the Social Media module. This module has four lessons.

These are: An introduction to Social Media, Social Media journey, Social Media channels and top tips, and Measuring success. By the end of this module, you'll be able to understand what Social Media is and why it's important for your brand or business. You'll be able to understand the journey to establishing an online presence for your brand, which includes setting objectives, selecting your target audience, selecting the right channel, choosing the right messaging, and managing your presence online. You'll be able to understand examples of different Social Media channels and get some top tips for getting started on these. And, finally, you'll be able to understand how and why you should measure the success of your efforts on Social Media.

This module is assessed in two ways. At the end of each lesson, there will be a multiple-choice quiz with five questions, which will cover what you learned in the videos. You can use this to check what you have learned. At the end of the module, there is a task, which will go beyond what you learned in the videos and give you the chance to learn even more about Social Media. You can upload this task to the website. We hope you enjoy the Course.

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Using Social Media for Business - Online Course - FutureLearn

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Hi, I'm Emer and I work in digital analytics. Welcome to the Social Media module. This module has four lessons. These are: An introduction to Social Media, Social Media journey, Social Media channels and top tips, and Measuring success.

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Hi! I'm Madhura! I'm currently pursuing a PhD in food law and policy at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Through my research, I explore the role of food safety legislation and private governance in food waste valorisation.

I also freelance as a science communicator and create content that explores how our food is produced, its social and environmental impact, and what food systems of the future might look like.

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Hi! I'm Madhura! I'm currently pursuing a PhD in food law and policy at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Through my research, I explore the role of food safety legislation and private governance in food waste valorisation. I also freelance as a science communicator and create content that explores how our food is produced, its...

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Useful Twitter thread with tips for writing threads about your research papers

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Useful Twitter thread with tips for writing threads about your research papers

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As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?). 
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/

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As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?). 
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/

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As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?).
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/
— El Duvelle 🌍 (@ElDuvelle) June 20, 2021

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As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?). 
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?). 
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
As a scientist on Twitter, you want to get your research known (right?). 
The best way to do this is write cool threads about your papers/preprints!🧵

-- Here's some (personal) advice on how to make #SciTwitter threads --

Comments & further tips welcome! 🙏
1/

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Personal academic website: how to easily create a quality (and cheap) personal website - The Leveraged PhD

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Other options include hosting with GoDaddy but I don't personally recommend them because they are a domain service primarily and do not have the features the

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It's okay to be smart - useful science blog

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It's okay to be smart - useful science blog

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So reads the official title of Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous weather-predicting groundhog/woodchuck/marmot/whistle pig (yes, they are, in fact, all the same animal... surprises abound in the world of meteorological mammals).

Phil hails from the town of Punxsutawney, PA, where every year on February 2, a group of grown men sporting top hats and waxed mustaches pull him out of a box and ask him when winter will end. I can never keep straight whether seeing the shadow means spring will come early or if we'll have a long winter, but this doesn't really matter, since rodents are not good weather prediction tools.

Despite being about as reliable as a coin flip, Phil is joined in this annual tradition by more than a dozen North American groundhogs like Shubenecadie Sam, General Beauregard Lee, and Wisconson's humbly-named Jimmy the Groundhog, seen here:

Surprise! Groundhogs can bite! And I would too, if you forcibly removed me from my warm, comfy house, held me aloft in the frigid air in front of thousands of gaping onlookers and flashing lights and asked me about a subject in which I have no expertise.

Rodents might not be real educated in the fields of meteorology and astronomy, but humans are! We've got Earth's orbital mechanics and their corresponding effect on annual temperature cycles down to a literal science. We smart. Just look...

I dug into the science of seasons this week, and I discovered that our system of defining "winter" and "summer" and "spring" and "autumn", at least the way that most of us non-meteorologists think of them, doesn't really make sense when you compare it to the weather.

You might already know that we define "winter" or "summer" based on Earth's position in relation to the sun, namely the solstices. This makes the seasons easy to keep track of, but for most of us these dates are unreliable, illogical, and remarkably disconnected from the actual weather. The little boxes on your calendar that say "First Day of Winter", "First Day of Spring" and so on don't line up very well with how cold or hot it is outside.

Unfortunately, that's what happens when you try to apply a single calendar to an entire planet... could there be a better way?

You can learn the rest of the story by watching this week's It's Okay To Be Smart up at the top of this post. Enjoy!

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So reads the official title of Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous weather-predicting groundhog/woodchuck/marmot/whistle pig (yes, they are, in fact, all the same animal... surprises abound in the world of meteorological mammals).

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Why every academic should have a personal website - blog

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Why every academic should have a personal website - blog

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Every academic should have a personal website. I have strong opinions on some topics, but allow me to convince you-my apologies to my poor colleagues who had to endure me talking about this topic ad nauseam already.

Let me preface my arguments with saying that numerous other disciplines have the same discussion; we academics are not alone in this regard. A recent article discusses the benefits of having a personal website for software developers, for example. It is also common advice for those who seek professional advancement. Some even refer to it as a life hack. I would not go as far. I merely think that, as an academic, you should have a personal website.

In the best tradition of the neo-scholastic discourse, I shall first present some arguments that are compelling to me, followed by half-hearted attempts at answering common objections.

Academic output can be hard to measure-sometimes, despite our best efforts, that magnificent paper just does not get accepted right away. A researcher is obviously not defined by their paper output. Especially in machine learning, many researchers also learn more skills than writing a good paper, so why not show them off somewhere?

Have some good code that you want to share? Put it on your website.

Have some nice notes about a certain topic or conference that you want to share? Put them on your website.

Have a game that you wrote while you were an undergrad and had plenty of time to kill? Put it on your website.

Have a workshop that you gave for an outreach programme? Put the slides on your website.

Not only does this have benefits for your 'clients' (such as the people using your software, or the students in your workshop), it also clearly 'marks' certain documents or artefacts as belonging to you.

For example, if you feel inclined to do so, you can share some documents with the rest of the world, such as:

Your CV or resume

A teaching statement

A research statement

Objection: 'But I do not want to treat everything I do as being a commodity that may or may not increase my employability!'

To which I say: And neither should you! I am emphatically not advocating for creating, say, a GitHub repository just for the sake of increasing your chances of being employed in the future at some technology company. I am merely stating that if you created something that others could find useful, why not share it with the rest of the world?

Objection: 'But I do not have to share anything with academia!'

To which I say: Even if you are a budding Ph.D. student, you surely have something to share. It could be a preprint (or a link to it), it could be a set of slides for talk you gave, it could be a summary of what you intend to research, along with your office address, or a picture of a cat. Everyone has something to share with the rest of the world.

The first argument was more about 'showing off' your skills, but a personal website also serves as a well-defined interface (in the sense of software development) for interacting with academia. You can put your most recent papers on there, along with information for how to cite them, or news about your lab, or whatever you see fit. Moreover, you can put a photo here, which will simplify finding you at a conference for discussing your cool papers.

The website constitutes an interface because you can disseminate information that you consider worthwhile. For example, if you are looking for collaborators, put it on your website prior to visiting the next conference. Same goes for open positions in your lab or in your research group. There is no harm for you in providing these things; it is to everybody's benefit.

Plus, you can mention your most favourite ways of contacting you. For example, Matt Might gives clear expectations of what is going to happen when you send him an email:

If you're trying to reach me by email: due to the volume of email I receive, email has become an ineffective means of communicating with me.

Even if you have not given up on email yet, you could provide other important details, such as messenger handles (Skype, Hangouts, ...) or PGP keys.

Objection: 'But I am not important enough for providing these things!'

To which I say: You are merely providing a service for other people. No one forces them to visit your website, but if they do, carefully provided information will always be well-received.

Objection: 'But I do not want people to access that information!'

To which I say: The best way to make sure that people cannot access information you do not want them to access is to not have them in the first place. People will find your employee page on the website of your university, for example. If you do not feel comfortable with putting an email address on your website, you do not have to put it there. If you are not comfortable putting a photo of you up there, you do not have to use one. However, information that is public should be treated as such; you could for example simply provide a picture of your university email address and nothing more.

Setting up a website for yourself also has the benefit that everything you do on it is under your control. I am not only talking about design, such as fonts and the like, but also about who is responsible for the website.

For example, if you change jobs-as you are wont to do, since this is academia-you merely have to change a few lines on your website. Nothing else gets lost in the transition. Your employee website might be deleted, but your personal one will endure.

Being in control of your own personal website also has an interesting legal implication: many publishers permit putting preprints on your personal website, but not, for some inane reason, on your institutional website or on, say, arXiv. This is a great way to share your research with other people (including, but not limited to, your own research community).

Objection: 'But I share all my preprints with arXiv.'

To which I say: And you should! But in some cases you might not be allowed to share a preprint on arXiv before publication. In these cases, putting them on your personal website is the best way to share them. Moreover, putting something on arXiv does not prevent you from also putting it on your website. Google Scholar is perfectly capable of finding multiple versions of the same document.

By now, you should be convinced that a personal website is in your best interest. The only question is how to start creating one. Many people consider this a daunting task, but in reality, it is just a matter of using a few tools. If you are capable of doing science, you are capable of creating a website!

Since there are many more ways to create a website than I could possibly cover in such an article, let me point you towards a few resources. My personal preference is to use a static website generator, such as Hugo for creating my website. I realise that this may not be everyone's preferred way, though, because it requires additional tools and hosting. GitHub offers GitHub pages, a great and easy way to host some pages about yourself and your projects. If you are more into nicer user interface, you might want to give WordPress a shot.

Now is the perfect time to start setting up your own website. Try it out, develop your style, and you will be surprised about the results. Until next time!

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Why every academic should have a personal website

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Every academic should have a personal website. I have strong opinions on some topics, but allow me to convince you-my apologies to my poor colleagues who had to endure me talking about this topic ad nauseam already. Let me preface my arguments with saying that numerous other disciplines have the same discussion; we academics are not alone in this regard.

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The Infinite Monkey - example of a useful science podcast

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The Infinite Monkey - example of a useful science podcast

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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Using Twitter to Build Your Personal Brand

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Using Twitter to Build Your Personal Brand

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This interview has been condensed for length. To see or listen to the full interview, click the video link above.
Chris Cornthwaite: [00:00:14] OK, so it is an absolute privilege today to have Stefanie Ginster with me. Stefanie is a PhD student in skin cancer research. She's probably better known, if I may say, for her work helping academics promote their work on Twitter. And she has a wildly popular Twitter account called Career Conversations, and she also has a quickly growing YouTube channel under the same name.
She grew a following of more than twenty thousand followers on Twitter. And two years ago, she didn't have that following. She started with an academic podcast that barely had any listeners because people couldn't find it. And it made her realize the importance of a strong online presence. And she kind of started to ask yourself the question, how can you get your work in front of more people? The more people who see your work after all, the more they can support you and the more kind of impact you can have. Stefanie, welcome. I'm so glad you're here.
Stefanie Ginster: Yes, I'm very excited to be here.

Chris: I'm really excited to have this conversation. And I mean, it's such a fun topic. And it's funny because I posted a thing on Twitter earlier in the week because I wrote a post this week called How I Got to 10,000 Followers on Twitter. And the really funny thing about that post is that you got to 20,000 followers in the same time that I got 10,000. So, I obviously have a lot to learn from you. I want to talk a lot about Twitter. But maybe just before we get to like the nuts and bolts of how to actually use Twitter, I mentioned a little bit of your story in the intro, but maybe can you tell me tell me a little bit more about how you kind of got into this world of being a kind of Twitter celebrity?

[00:02:02] Why Twitter

Stefanie: Twitter celebrity, well, (laughs) I started actually having an academic podcast that was about academic careers because I was very fed up with the job prospects that we had. So, I wanted to inspire people to pursue a career that really fulfills them. And I had really good guests on the podcast. I even had a Nobel Prize winner, but nobody listened to the podcast because nobody found it. And I was actually no Twitter consumer at home. I realized academics were on Twitter, so I have to understand it. And I'm thinking maybe this is my answer, that I haven't been like an intuitive Twitter user and had to learn everything from an intellectual standpoint. So I was really strategic and I looked at several Twitter videos, but they were all not very good. So instead then I looked at people that give more like Instagram and YouTube advice. And then I adopted their advice to Twitter.

And this was actually awesome because I was able to grow so fast with that Instagram strategies that I have adopted.

Chris: So do you remember a moment like when you were kind of starting on Twitter? Do you remember having a moment where you realized, like, "Hey, this is going to work"? Or like seeing starting to see things take off? Do you remember what that was like?

[00:03:18] On Growing a Twitter Following

Stefanie: Yes, it was actually as soon as I got a little bit strategic. One of the most important strategic tips as time progressed, was to find people doing something similar to you and interact with their audience.

As soon as I did that, I saw tremendous growth. So, yeah, once I realized that I set myself the goal to 50 followers per week. And I also set myself the goal, it was in August, so I decided I want to have 10000 followers by the end of the year and I managed to do that. And then next August, I have twenty thousand followers. That was actually within a year.
I want to ask you something that I think about a lot. How important are Twitter followers? That's like kind of where I want to like I want to think through because I know I see a lot of people like only five more followers and then I have five hundred or only, you know, are like, oh, 50 people and followed me today. And like we do pay attention. And even though I don't really tweet about my numbers, I obviously notice too. Right. So how do you kind of view that? Is it vitally important? Like how do you how do you view that metric of, like, the number of followers you have?
[00:07:17] The Value of Engaged Followers

Well, I'm actually only interested in engaged followers, so people that are interacting with my tweets on a regular basis.

There are two reasons. First of all, right now I run a business, so I drove as many potential customers as possible. So, in that sense, I care about followers because there are more potential customers. But actually having a lot of followers that are not really interested in what you have to say is going to harm you in the long term (because of the Twitter algorithm). Ultimately I prefer to have fewer followers, but those are really interested in what I have to say rather than a lot of followers.
Why don't we talk a little bit about that and then we'll get into some of the algorithm stuff. But how do you how do you find those people? How do you make sure those are the people that you're speaking to and maybe even like how do you get rid of, not get rid of people, but like, how do you not attract the people you don't want to?
[00:08:24]

Actually I get rid of people that are annoying quite often! And so if you don't want to start a huge drama or something, you block people and you immediately unblock-this is called "soft blocking," and then they stop following you and you don't show up in their timeline anymore. And this problem solves itself.

[00:10:00] On Finding Your Voice
Yeah. OK, so I want to ask about finding your voice. It's something I think about a lot. And before you get into knowing algorithm, you need to kind of know what you have to say. Do you think like when you're and I know you engage with a lot of people because you do kind of like consulting on helping people get better at using their Twitter. Do you find that this is a place a lot of people get hung up on and like finding, "Do I actually have anything to say? Is it worth saying? Should I say it?" What are the objections you hear about finding your voice and the challenges people have?
People don't really phrase it like this. It is more like, "I'm scared to talk to that many people. I don't know if I have a lot of value to add it like that."

And actually, when I do the first coaching session, it's usually dedicated to this whole self-value thing. So, we talk a lot about what they feel they are good at, completely independent from their PhD. And then, eventually, they find out that they also super good at organizing and productivity and business, for instance. Even if you're a new PhD candidate, this is still some value that you can get, even like to assistant professors, also full professors. If you are super structured in, you know, how you organize your day or something, this is value you can add to all academics.

The problem with your talents is usually you don't notice that this is a talent that other people would like to have because it is so natural to you. So, this is what I recommend others what we are focusing on a lot just now.

[00:11:38] On PhDs finding their voice
OK, so do you find do you find that those PhDs, do they have something to say and they just have trouble saying it? Or more frequently, do you find that people feel like they should use Twitter. And even though they don't want to, they feel like academics need to use Twitter to be successful?
Well, it is both, actually. And there's also this little caveat that, "I'm an academic. I should use Twitter, but I shouldn't tweet unless I have a paper."

And then the whole world will find it because just one magical tweet. (*Sarcasm)

Yes. Yes, exactly. There was actually one person who put coaching with me on a grant application because they couldn't afford it by themself, but they said, "I will then start as soon as my paper is out." And I told him, I would do it exactly the other way around. Started the following that is interested in what you have to say before you launch a paper, because you don't want people, you're not writing your paper to entertain your followers. Your building your followers because you know that they are going to read your work.

[00:15:18] Using the Twitter algorithm

So how you actually play this game, and I don't know if you'd agree with this, but I kind of find that it's a bit of a game sometimes? And how do you start to build that following? And what are some of the tricks that you tell people or that you that you would give people if they're starting out, to grow?

OK, so the first thing that people need to understand is you need to give physically, you need to give Twitter what it wants and what Twitter wants is more ad revenue. And in order to get more ad revenue, it needs to keep people on the platform for longer so that it can show people more.

So the way that Twitter keeps people on the platform for longer is by showing them more interesting content.

And in order to determine which type of content is interesting, usually Twitter looks at the amounts of people that have seen a tweet and the amount of people that have interacted with a tweet. And this is also, by the way, why it is so important to have engaged followers. I mean, you can even buy followers, but those people are not going to interact with your tweets. So, it looks like you have 10000 followers, and you get three likes or something for each tweet. So Twitter's going to think, "this guy is not very interesting" and it is not going to waste other people's time with your tweets. So, you're actually hurting Twitter.
[00:16:55] Yeah, I heard I heard you say at one point, this is why I like follow-for-follow is such a bad strategy in building.
[00:17:02] Yes, exactly. And as soon as you've understood that, that it is all about engagement, it actually becomes quite easy because then. For instance, I always ask questions on Twitter and this is a nice side effect that you also get to do a lot of market research by asking questions.

[00:23:24] The importance of an optimised profile

And then another super important thing is to have a profile. Where it is actually clear within a split second what your profile is all about, because people are not going to work to find out how you are going to add value to them. If it is not clear they're just moving onto the next profile. And most people completely miss out on the header image to kind of visualize what it is that they are doing. For instance, in my header image, I have a computer and a phone and I have a little tag line. So, I hope that subconsciously people are realizing that I'm doing something digital. And my tagline is, "your work deserves to be seen." So I'm hoping that this kind of comes across.

And then I have a little bio also that just says I show academics how to promote their work on Twitter. So it is very straightforward. And lots of people are just trying to cram so many things into that bio. At the end of the day, they're not really talking about anything and it is not of any value for the person was just discovering them.

So use simple language and yet choose your main area that you are tweeting about.
This interview has been condensed for length. To see or listen to the full interview, click the video link above.

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Using Twitter to Build Your Personal Brand - Interview with Stefanie Ginster, Career Conversations Founder - Roostervane

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This interview has been condensed for length. To see or listen to the full interview, click the video link above. Chris Cornthwaite: [00:00:14] OK, so it is an absolute privilege today to have Stefanie Ginster with me. Stefanie is a PhD student in skin cancer research.

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Our Top Twitter Tips are 4 years old today, and to celebrate, we've completely re-written and revised them for 2015. The previous tips were viewed over 30,000 times before we took them down. We hope that many more will find the new version just as useful!

How can Twitter enhance the impact of your research?

Twitter is one of the most powerful social media platforms for academics, given the number of highly focussed and influential networks of people who use it. Effective use of Twitter doesn't just amplify your research, it enables conversations to take place about it. This can enrich your research and enable you to make a far greater impact:

You can use Twitter to get feedback on new research ideas, so that you can reframe them to be more relevant to the people who might use your findings

You can get insights into the way that likely users of your research are talking about the topics you're working on - the kind of language they're using and the sorts of things they're most interested in. These sorts of insights can be invaluable when you need to start communicating your findings

You can be the first to find out about news and events related to your research, and you can link your own work to what's happening, making it more likely that your work is picked up and debated

An increasing number of researchers are finding out about funding via Twitter. You can also identify collaborators for grant proposals, who already trust to be a good team member through your online interactions with them. You can find out about funding that you might not have come across through your institution, especially linked to industry, which can help generate impacts from research

As we've blogged recently, more and more researchers are using Twitter to crowd-fund parts of their research. The benefits of additional funding are often dwarfed by the power of an effective crowd-funding campaign to reach out to new audiences about your research.

Why aren't you seeing these benefits?

So how do you get all these great impacts social media? Perhaps you've been on Twitter for months or even years now, and you've still got a small and very slow-growing following, which doesn't give you any of these benefits? If that's the case, then you've probably not been using Twitter strategically for impact. That's why we created these top tips.

We've drawn these tips from our experience managing three Twitter accounts in particular:

@fasttrackimpact - our own Twitter account, which arose from the knowledge exchange research we conducted in a UK Research Council funded project that concluded in 2012 (formerly @SustainLearning)

- a Twitter account which arose from the science side of the same research project. The IUCN's UK Peatland Programme pursued the legacy of the project and rather than starting its own Twitter account, given the overlap in audience, we re-branded @reluuplands as @IUCNpeat in 2015

- a Twitter account for a product that arose from another research project, and grew into a global business supporting four staff within 2 years, marketed solely via Twitter.

Our Top Twitter Tips for Research Impact

Tweet yourself, your projects and your institution

In addition to your personal Twitter profile, consider opening accounts for some of your research groups or projects. Each of your research projects is likely to have a different focus, and you're probably a member of more than one group or institution in your University that doesn't have a Twitter account. A project Twitter account is an easy addition to your next "Pathways to Impact" statement when you're applying for funding, and some sort of engagement with social media is increasingly expected by reviewers.

Opening an institutional account will usually need to be a group decision. If everyone agrees, others can either send you material to tweet or you can give everyone the Twitter username and password to tweet themselves (if so, you'll need to agree on the nature of material you want posted, or it may be easier to decide on the things you want to avoid).

Open accounts for major research projects that will be going for a few years, and that you hope will have some form of successor project in future (so you've got time to build a following and don't have too many accounts to manage). Again, the burden doesn't have to be entirely yours - it can be delegated to a post-doc and shared with other team members. Other ideas you might want to consider:

Link to your Twitter feed from your project/institution homepage, and include the link in newsletters, presentations and consider putting it in your email signature

Every time you do a conference/workshop/seminar presentation, put your slides online (e.g. using SlideShare) and tweet them

Every time you get a paper published, tweet the link to the article on the publisher's website (if it's not open access, consider adding that you can send copies if need be). If you can get permission, upload a copy on ResearchGate or similar and tweet the link

Tweet quotes from speakers at conferences you attend, using the conference hashtag (make one up if there isn't one), to connect with other delegates and make them aware of your work

Set up Science Direct (or something similar) and Google News and Google Scholar alerts for key words and authors that are particularly relevant to your work, so you can be the first to let your followers know about new developments linked to your shared interests

When you've got a tweet that's of much wider, general interest, you can re-tweet it from your other project/institutional accounts, to reach a much larger audience than you could ever command from your personal account or one project

Next time you're revising your website, why not consider adding buttons to enable readers to share what they're reading via Twitter and other social media platforms?

Don't just wait for people to find you: actively promote your Twitter stream

There are some easy things you can do to promote your twitter stream, like including links on your homepage, project websites and in your email signature. But more active promotion of your Twitter feed can attract many more followers:

Make sure you've got an effective biography (consider including some popular and relevant hastags in it if possible) and enough really informative/useful (typically with a link to more information) tweets in your stream before actively marketing what you're doing

Contact relevant people with large followings to ask if they can re-tweet key messages you've sent - tweet or Direct Message them via Twitter, and if that doesn't work, find their email address via an internet search and email (or phone) them

Use hashtags (#) to make your tweets visible to more people (e.g. ) - notice which hashtags people you're following are using, and use them. If you're planning a Twitter campaign on a particular topic (e.g. linked to a new paper or policy brief), you could make up your own hashtag, but for it to work, others will need to use it, so you may want to work on getting a key tweet including your hashtag re-tweeted by others with larger followings

The way most people find out about other people on Twitter is when they get followed. Default settings send an email and mobile notification to a user when a new person starts following them (including their brief biography) - if they like what they read, chances are they will follow you. Twitter recommendations (on www.twitter.com) can be helpful, but it will only recommend a few people and recommendations are less so when you're just starting out. If you log out of Twitter and search for your profile on the website, Twitter will list others who are similar to you on the basis of who they follow and who follows them, compared to you. But the best way to find others who may be interested in what you're doing is to see who is following other users who are tweeting very similar things to you:

Who are the people you most frequently re-tweet? Who's tweets are you most likely to follow links from? Go to these people's profiles and see who's following them, then systematically follow their followers

If you have time, try and be a bit selective - you can usually filter out the least relevant people from their username (e.g. don't bother following companies that are clearly just following the person to try and get their custom)

Most people will decide whether or not to follow you based on the last three tweets you wrote, so before you start following lots of people strategically, make sure your last three tweets are representative of the sort of thing you tweet about, and among your best (e.g. look back through your historic tweets to see if there was something you wrote a few weeks or months ago that was popular, which you could tweet again)

If you're following people who are following a specific Twitter account, make sure that one of your most recent three tweets is either a retweet from the account you're targeting or a quoted re-tweet with your take on the story, so that followers instantly recognize that you're tweeting about material they're familiar with

Twitter monitors the ratio of people following you to the number of people you follow to stop spammers, so you will reach a limit beyond which you cannot follow anyone else. But don't let that stop you getting the word out about what you're doing. Unlike Facebook, it is common and acceptable to unfollow users (they won't be notified that you unfollowed them) to free up room to follow others. If possible, unfollow the people who you've been following for longest who have not followed you back (so you give people as long as possible to notice you've followed them and they have time to check you out). Tools like ManageFlitter, , Unfollow for Twitter, and UnfollowSpy can make strategic unfollowing very quick and easy. Note that each of these websites and apps will only allow you to unfollow a set number of people every day unless you pay. However, if you do pay for unlimited unfollows, Twitter can revoke authorisation from the website or app to your account for unfollowing too many people (and the website or app will no longer work for you), so it is best not to pay for these services.

One problem with this approach is that you'll no longer be able to use this account to follow tweets the people you're most interested in learning from (as they'll be lost in the noise of all the other tweets from people you just wanted to know you existed). To ensure you can still use Twitter to gather information from those you're most interested in, either make sure you only market your project or institutional Twitter accounts in this way, or set up a "personal" Twitter account where you follow those you're most interested in and a "work" Twitter account that follows many more people, where you put out most (if not all) of your tweets. Lists can also be useful for this - set up a list of users who tweet in different areas so you can look at a more selective timeline of tweets that interest you

Work on your signal-noise ratio

"Most people will follow you because they share your core interests (your "signal"), but they will rapidly lose interest if too many of your tweets are not relevant to these interests (effectively "noise" they have to filter out when scanning through their timeline)"

As an academic, you need to build your reputation in your chosen field. Twitter can help you reach a network of highly relevant academics, as well as potential users of your research, and make them aware of your work. To do this effectively, you need to decide what it is that you want to be "known" for, and then work on building your reputation in that area. Most people will follow you because they share your core interests (your "signal"), but they will rapidly lose interest if too many of your tweets are not relevant to these interests (effectively "noise" they have to filter out when scanning through their timeline):

Consider how useful and relevant each tweet is before sending it, to increase the likelihood that your followers find your tweets useful and keep following you

Ensure the majority of your tweets have hyperlinks to further information

Provide an image (or video) to accompany your tweets where possible (research by Twitter shows that tweets with images are re-tweeted 35% more than text-only tweets and videos give a 28% uplift). Bear in mind that some web links automatically generate an accompanying image (e.g. many blogs, newspaper sites and video sites automatically generate an image, title and first line of the article below your tweet once it has been sent)

Avoid sending too many tweets and re-tweets at a time - if you're at a conference and tweeting every couple of minutes, followers who aren't interested in the conference are likely to get fed up of you dominating their timeline on a single narrow issue and unfollow you

Avoid using too many acronyms and abbreviations in your tweets - they may make sense to you but many people reading fast will simply skim over your tweet if they don't understand you instantly. Better to say less in complete words than to try and cram too much in, if it means you resort to acronyms and abbreviations

If you're increasingly tweeting about things that are very different to your core interests, consider setting up a new Twitter stream devoted to that issue/interest

If you're tweeting from a project or institutional account, try not to mix work and personal tweets. Remember you're tweeting on behalf of a group, so telling people about what you're doing on holiday is going to sound a bit strange (either your institution appears to be on holiday or it becomes clear that the Twitter stream is really only about one person (who's on holiday) and not the whole group). If you do want to mix personal and work tweets (some commentators suggest this can help build rapport with your followers), make sure your biography clearly states the name of the person tweeting on behalf of the project or organisation

Delete conversations once they're finished. One of the great strengths of Twitter is the capacity to join in conversations about your research and other people's work. However, people are less likely to follow you if they look through your timeline and can't find information-rich, relevant material easily because it is cluttered up with lots of conversation. Particularly if you're about to strategically follow a lot of people, make sure you delete all recent replies from your timeline (assuming the conversations are over), so that they can easily see your material and are more likely to follow you

It is also worth working on the signal:noise ratio in those you follow - if you find that you've started automatically skimming or skipping tweets by certain people, chances are they rarely have anything particularly relevant/useful to say - unfollow them and reduce the amount of noise you have to trawl through.

Get your timing right

Because of the way Twitter works, most people only read a fraction of the tweets in their timeline, so if you're tweeting on a day and time that none of your audience are reading their timelines, you could be tweeting into the void. Timing is also about linking to the issues of the day - reframing to link into an ongoing news story or debate can really get your research some attention:

Link your tweets to ongoing events in academia and the news, using linked hashtags where relevant

If you've got a lot to say, don't tweet in bursts; rather spread your tweets through the day, using something like to automatically schedule your tweets (so you don't have to keep interrupting your day). Someone who only logs into Twitter at the end of the day may not get to the three tweets you put out at 8 am, but will probably get at least one of the ones that were scheduled for the afternoon. Warning: your friends might think you have super-human powers when they discover you're tweeting while lecturing or speaking at a conference (many people actually schedule conference tweets in advance, based on the programme timings)

Get to know when your followers are most likely to read your tweets. The time of day you're most likely to get retweets and other engagement from academics is 7-9 am and 5-7 pm on week days, before/after and during the commute to/from work. Tweeting between 8-9 am is particularly effective. There is often a quite different audience of academics reading tweets at the weekend to these week-day times, so it is worth repeating key messages from the week at the weekend. Similarly, if you come across some great work-related material over the weekend, remember to re-use it later in the week when different people are more likely to pick it up

Repeat key tweets at different times the following days - if you have a newsletter, set HootSuite to tweet a headline per day with the link to your newsletter PDF

Have a relatively constant presence if you can - if you only have time to log on once a day or once a week, schedule your tweets to spread them through the day or week

Use Twitter as part of a wider social media and communications strategy

Twitter is just one of many social media platforms, so consider putting your material out via other platforms too, and remember that people who might use your research aren't always using social media, so you're going to want to think about other ways of reaching out to your audiences:

Come up with a properly thought-through social media strategy as part of a wider communications strategy for your research, whether as an individual, a project or an institution - what are you trying to achieve through communication? Why are you using social media? Set your goals, come up with a strategy to meet them and monitor your progress

Everyone has different learning preferences (some like to read, others to listen, watch or do) and everyone has different preferences for the media through which they want to learn. Therefore, try and adapt your research for as many different learning preferences as possible, via as many different media as you have time to engage with. Also tweet links to different types of media - press releases, videos, journal articles, photos etc

Adapt your approach to each platform, rather than just linking Twitter to your Facebook account. Effective use of Twitter involves re-sending key tweets a few times, which is likely to annoy friends on Facebook or colleagues on LinkedIn. Instead, consider setting up a Facebook group for your project or institution, and just putting material there. Alternatively, use the Selective Tweets app on Facebook and choose which tweets you want to appear on Facebook by putting at the end of your tweet.

Remember that social media is just one form of communication, and that there will be many who are interested in your work who are not using these technologies. Keep up your project newsletter - printing and posting where relevant (but still tweeting the link to the PDF, hosted somewhere you can count hits like , ResearchGate or ). Keep presenting at conferences and running workshops for the end users of your research (of course tweeting videos of what you do on You Tube and putting your presentations on SlideShare)

Constantly refine your practice

Watch how other academics, projects or institutions with large followings tweet:

Learn good practice from others, and experiment yourself

Take note when something annoys you about the way other people use Twitter and avoid doing that yourself

Monitor and learn from your successes and flops:

Which of your tweets are most likely to get re-tweeted? Which tweets don't get re-tweeted? What do they have in common, and what can you learn from this? How were you using Twitter on the day you got 10 new followers?

Put (open access) documents that you cite on Twitter in places where you can count hits - which tweets make people click on the link (and presumably read your document), and which ones fall flat? What can you learn from this?

Experiment with different headlines in Twitter to see which ones work best - try and reframe your point and tweet it again later that day, and see if you have more success

Read through the material you're tweeting and find quotes you can use to promote the link in a slightly different way - sometimes one of these quotes really takes off, far more effectively than the headline. If you're tweeting a blog you wrote, then you might want to consider re-titling the blog at this point!

Remember it's all about relationships

Don't forget twitter is about communicating and building a relationship with people and not just marketing your own or institutions work at them. So, remember to check other similar institutions/academics tweets and respond to those that are interesting. As an academic, Twitter allows your work to reach a much wider audience and also enables more discussion of your work with others who may put it into practice.

Also, as with any other social setting there is "Twitter Etiquette", for example: thank anyone who answers you directly or tweets about your work; and always give credit where it's due. If someone gave you the information credit him or her with it, either by using via @person1 (if they are a twitter user) or as a quote in text.

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Our Top Twitter Tips are 4 years old today, and to celebrate, we've completely re-written and revised them for 2015. The previous tips were viewed over 30,000 times before we took them down. We hope that many more will find the new version just as useful!

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