1. Building your Online Identity
PdOC Society
DR HELEN WEBSTER
RESEARCHER DEVELOPMENT
2. Slides
Slides are online: Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/
3. Social Media in Academia
Enhancing or changing practice?
Publishing Models: Open Access Publishing
Quality Assessment Models: Altmetrics
Funding: Collaboration, consortia and large projects
Pedagogy: digital classroom, ‘pedagogy of
abundance’
Conference ‘attendance’ – livestreaming,
liveblogging, podcasting
Impact: narrowcasting online and digital resources
5. Current levels of engagement
What do you currently use, and how?
Your profile:
Tools
Personal, professional or mixed?
Your use:
Static
or evolving?
Consume or participate?
Broadcast or interact?
6. Aims
maximum Research
Admin Professional
and service activities
Impact and
Teaching public
minimum engagement
7. Where to build your online identity?
Proprietry/free
The Academic The Open
Web Web
Password/open
8. Postdocs and Online identity
You currently belong to an institution, a discipline
and a profession. All these may change, and your
webspace and contacts associated with them.
Any open web platform you use may be removed or
changed.
How will you ensure longer-term online
stability?
10. Level: Minimum
Passive, static broadcast model
Visibility:
Remaining completely invisible online takes effort
Pros and cons of keeping a low profile these days
Identity:
To what extent is it possible to keep personal and private separate?
Control:
If you don’t, someone else will …
Previous employers, universities, websites you register for - all out of
date and out of context
OR ‘friends’ may share personal material outside your own preferred
circles….
11. Level: Minimum
Visibility
Visibility:
Think about your metadata and keyword search
terms
link to ‘authority’ sites and have them link to you
update ‘regularly’ and at peak times
Complete profiles as much as possible
12. Level: Minimum
Invisibility
Invisibility:
Google yourself regularly (set up Google alerts) and check for
information put online by others
Check privacy and permission settings carefully
Use pseudonyms and abstract profile pictures
Different platforms for different purposes
Have a policy on ‘friending’, ‘following’ etc and add a clear statement
of your intentions
Avoid logins and synching with Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn etc
Don’t let your computer ‘remember’ your login
13. Level:Minimum
Collate and disambiguate yourself
Dr Jonathan Barnard, Prof. Denys Turner,
Cambridge University Medieval Studies
14. Level:Minimum
Building a static profile
Your Department or Faculty webpage
Your own website (tip: use a blog platform e.g.
Wordpress)
Creating profiles and ‘online cvs’ on networking
sites:
LinkedIn
Facebook
Academia.edu
Google+ profile
Google Scholar profile
ResearcherID and ORCID
Consume social media
15. Level: Minimum
presenting yourself
Use your real name
(Namechk)
Grab variants if possible
Use a recognisable photo
Use a consistent, concise
‘strapline’ summing up
who you are and what
you do
Think about keywords,
tagging, search terms
and metadata
Link everything
17. Level: Medium
active participation and networking
Participatory, networked, interactive, pull not
push
Network:
Types of connection, types of network
• Interact:
o Feed, respond, ask, share, curate, comment (and ‘like’)
18. Level:medium
Building an online network
Draw contacts from other accounts
Search engines: Google, Social Media search
engines, built-in search boxes in platforms
Listorious
Socialmention
Technorati
Keywords, people’s names
Snowball- see who well-connected people and
institutions are connected to
Use suggestions…
19. Level: Medium
Maintaining an online network
Updating - what might you share?
Profersional tone
Validate their interactions – endorse, like, retweet, comment, ask
Don’t just offer self-promotion! Reframe it.
Pass on resources, links and contacts as well as your own
information
Frictionless sharing
Genuine, mutually meaningful networking
‘Regular’ updates and interactions
20. Level: Medium
Sharing digital offcuts
Documents: Scribd, Issuu
Slides: Slideshare
Images: Flickr
Livestreaming: Ustream, Livestream
Various formats as PDFs: Academia.edu
Bibliographies: Mendeley
Research
data and outputs:
DSpace@Cambridge
Creative Commons Licensing
22. Level: Maximum
You as ProdUser – create, not just consume
Offcuts, ‘collateral damage’ from research, admin,
teaching etc
Create spaces to network and present
Create and administrate a group
Blogging
Video and audio
Group rather than individual?
23. A Strategy for Building an Online Identity
Approach:
Be as ‘open’, up-to-date and interactive as you can/feel
comfortable
Be professional, even in personal circles, but not
personality-free
Keep control over what’s posted
Infrastructure:
Choose a few sites to cover various needs and audiences,
nominate one as central, link them
Be consistent, or delete sites you’re not using
Time management
Frictionless workflow
Set time aside once a month
24. Resources
On Good Practice for
Researchers
Vitae’s Handbook of Social Media for
Researchers and Supervisors
RIN’s Social Media: A Guide for
Researchers