Presentation providing an overview of using social media in research (slides amended to activate links, and add in verbally presented elements)

1. Shouting about your work
(owning your digital profile)
Dr Jim Caryl, Research Communications Manager
@jacaryl

2. • LinkedIn
• Mendeley
• ResearchGate
• ORCiD
• Blog
• Personal website
• Twitter
• University profile
• Partner
organisation
Digital scholarship

3. Social media overview

4. “No-one can make you post trivial things on social media.” - Matt Shipman, Communication Breakdown
• Connect with the wider research community
• Share your research and publications
• Interact with other sectors and the public
• Get answers. Fast
• Find work
• Share your experiences
• Keep tabs on the competition
• Collaborate
• Keep up to date with the latest research
• Follow conferences you can't attend
Social media: why bother?

5. Online collaborations: Scientists and the social network (2014) Nature
Idle browse or chat?

6. Online collaborations: Scientists and the social network (2014) Nature
Most platforms used as a web to catch people trying to
get in contact with you.
Interaction with Twitter is more engaged – to follow
discussions, comment on research, discover and share
papers, and to discover and contact peers
Idle browse or chat?

7. Discovering content online that is timely and
relevant to my research and career
Discovering (and being discovered by) potential
collaborators
Invitations to give research seminars and other
talks, or to chair/moderate conference sessions,
often involving free travel and honoraria
Invitations to write book chapters
How has social media
helped/harmed your career?

8. Content for my CV to demonstrate communication
skills and outreach savvy
Direct access to important people in science and
government
Access to papers using #icanhazpdf (especially
helpful now that I'm at a small non-profit research
institution instead of a university department or
large museum)
How has social media
helped/harmed your career?

9. Getting near-instantaneous answers to questions
ranging from technical troubleshooting to polls
Last but not least, an incredible amount of
support and camaraderie, which has been
especially helpful during my recent career
transitions and a transatlantic, urban-to-rural
move
How has social media
helped/harmed your career?

10. Google yourself
• How visible are you?
• Are your profile(s) consistent?
• Are they up to date?
Audit your channels:
• What's being said about your research area?
• Who is talking about it?
• What channels are they using?
Useful tools: SocialMention.com | Google.com/alerts | twitter.com/search-home | Twitter lists
Getting started: audit

11. Research profiles
Research profiles

12. Your professional profile is the sum of all your professional activities—
academic and beyond
Your digital profile articulates this, providing a link
between you and the activities you're involved
with
Your online presence should be
• Visible
• Consistent
• Credible
• Have a voice
• Anchored to a ‘hub’
Research profiles: your digital self

13. Visible:
What is your first presence in Google? Do you have
control over this profile?
Consistent:
Do you convey your up to date bio, key messages and
website ‘hub’ in each place?
Credible:
Do you have a credible profile at UoG? Are your profiles
still tied to former institutions? Do your website(s)
appearance reflect poorly on you?
Have a voice:
Do you blog or tweet professionally?
Research profiles: your digital self

14. If you have no profile or visibility online, it is very difficult to promote yourself
…but worse, it makes it impossible for anyone else to champion you
Research profiles

15. Making peace with self-promotion, by Liz Neeley
• Your work won’t speak for itself
• You won’t annoy people
• Don’t let doubt and disbelief sabotage you
Other resources: Nature’s tips for authors: promoting your paper
The self-promotion hurdle

16. Get access to your University staff profile
Find a good image and use it across your social media
Find your online communities (audit)
Contribute to relevant discussion
Anchor your profiles to a consistent ‘hub’ website/profile
Detail who you are/what you do—need to appear credible
Getting started: 1st steps

17. Do not leave it to a third-
person.
Take ownership of your
profile:
If you can write an email or
format a Word document,
you have the technical skill
to edit your staff template!
gla.ac.uk/registert4/research
Click here 
Getting started: 1st steps

18. Especially useful:
say what you've done in the
context of what everyone else
has done.
Your ‘Hub’: staff profile

19. • Biography: Short, focus, easy for
others to use
• Explain who you are, what you do,
why it matters*
* It doesn’t need to matter to everyone, but it does need to
matter to the audiences you want to reach
• Research interests:
– Current activities
– Five things you did or started
– Signpost to e.g. project site, blog,
partners*
* Are you visible within your partner’s web pages? Can you
be—it’s always worth asking? Reciprocity is important.
• Link to online academic networking
platforms:
– ResearchGate
– Academic.edu
– Others too, according to discipline
• Your ORCID ID
• Link to social media accounts:
Twitter, FB (if used professionally)
• Link to LinkedIn (for non-academic
partners) – complete a ‘Summary’
• Link to Google Scholar (basic but
useful)
Your ‘Hub’: staff profile

20. LinkedIn
Make use of the summary. Position yourself. Ask yourself ‘so what?’ Force yourself to take
a step back and think what might hook people.
Think about: Who you want to speak to?
Who do you want to collaborate with? Invite contact
What do you want them to learn or do?
Then: Explain who you are? What you do? Why it matters.
Avoid jargon, your specialist peers are quite likely to connect with you through specialist
networks, so think about the wider community who might find you through LinkedIn.
Include a top few key achievements—a notable discovery? Important networks or projects
you established and why it mattered. Include notable partners (people like to know that you
can work with non-academics)
Point them towards places where they can find out more.
LinkedIn: position yourself

21. Your own website can travel
between jobs. Keep it up to date,
and link to it from your University
profile (which is the credible link to
your employer)
Position information & resources,
or showcase events and activities
you’ve been involved with. An easy
place to send people when you’re
in a rush.
Squarespace.com
Hosted Wordpress.com
Personal websites: an alternative hub

22. http://flavors.me
http://about.me
Personal websites: aggregators
Keep it together
Don’t give people
the run around,
aggregate your
media.
These sites allow
you to stream your
social media
content into one
place, and build
bespoke ‘bio’
pages.

23. Twitter
Amplify your message. Join the conversation
“No-one can make you post
trivial things on social
media…no-one can make you
follow those who do”
— Matt Shipman,
Communication Breakdown

24. The minimum: A Twitter ‘business card’. Think
of it as a digital identifier that people can use to
talk about you, and allows you (and others) to
track these and find out more.
You still need a minimum of content.
• Use your real name
• Include a photo
• Include a bio:
– What you do
– Key message
– Can include @project
– A link to you ‘hub’
Getting started: 1st steps

25. Twitter: 1st steps
• Open an account at Twitter.com
• Why you should be on Twitter (start-up guide from British
Ecological Society, but up to date and relevant to all fields)
• Find a role model (prominent tweeter in your field)
• Use #hashtags and lists to cut through the noise
• Measure your success in outcomes not number of followers
• Be yourself

26. 1. Get rid of the egg (the default avatar) makes you look like a spammer
2. Don't pick a Twitter name that is too long, or difficult to spell or remember
3. Tweet regularly (2-3 day - find out when others are active: https://followerwonk.com)
4. Don't ignore people who tweet at you (phone app useful)
5. Engage in conversation. “Broadcast-only” approaches are rarely popular
6. Learn the #hashtags for your subject field or topics of interest, and use them
7. Don't just make statements. Ask questions
8. Don't just post links to news articles - add your input
9. Do show your personality. Crack some jokes
10. Have fun, but be respectful (you’re in public)
10 rules to tweet by
Adapted from post: Gulliver (2012) Chronicle of Higher Education
Twitter: 1st steps

27. Twitter: #hashtags
The best way to use hashtags is to identify which tags
are popular or used by your community of interest.
Find prominent tweeters in your field/interest group and
see which hashtags they use
There are also #hashtag projects, such as symplur.com,
which aim to document/rank health hashtags

28. Twitter: #hashtags

29. Twitter: #hashtags
There are several hashtags relevant to
early-career researchers, such as
#ECRchat.

30. Create ‘lists’ of Tweeters based on who
they are or what they tweet about. You
don’t have to follow them.

31. https://about.twitter.com/products/tweetdeck
Getting organised: curate

32. https://about.twitter.com/products/tweetdeck
People mentioning
you, RTs, favourites
Your main feed
Can have a column for
#hashtag searches of
keywords, e.g. rabies
Create ‘lists’ to
curate different
groups of
people, and thus
content
Getting organised: curate

33. • Great opportunity to get involved. The British Ecological
Society have a broadly relevant guide to Twitter in conferences.
• Using #hashtags opens up conferences to wider audience
• Opens backchannels for discussions by participants
• Tweets offer criticism, review, extra resources to discussions
• Helps you identify people to meet (and arrange to do so)
• Share media directly (you can view Slideshare decks in tweets)
Twitter: Conferences

34. Quite simply, tweet your paper. Tag a Twitter-user who might retweet
you to a wider audience (funder, professional org, community of interest,
your institution). Use a hashtag (look for the ones other people use)
Twitter: self-promotion

35. Blogging
A blog helps gives substance to your social
media presence.
Use to position your research, activity,
successes, advocacy or other messages.
Where?
Wordpress.com
Wordpress.org

36. • Blog about academic papers
• Make the research process visible
• An online portfolio
• Guest blog / op-ed on expert area
• Connect with the wider public
Why blog?

37. Whether writing about a research paper or not,
don’t forget:
• You are part of the story
• Your writing can emphasise your skills in
logistics, overcoming struggles in the field
• Communicate the process of your research,
not just the findings
• Great to record your activities with external
stakeholders—useful for you, and useful for
others to know that they could work with
you too
‘When bridges in the jungle fail’
Chris Schmitt (@fuzzyatelin)
Evopropinquitous blog (brilliant read)
Why blog?

38. Getting started: 1st steps
• Identify what type of blogger you'll be
(personal/professional)
• Start your own blog or contribute to a group blog
• Use your social media audit to find a blogger role model
• Identify your audience
• Start blogging and assess things in three months time

39. Your own blog
Adv: your own space, your own rules, self-edited, idiosyncratic
Disadv: Responsible for everything, hard to talk about your research in
every post
Options:
Wordpress.com (online hosted) and Wordpress.org (you download and find
a host)
Blogger.com
Tumblr.com
If you just want to post (without bother of a blog site) consider Medium
Where to blog

40. Collaborative blog
Adv: Pooled source of content, some editorial input (others read, blog post
ideas discussed), can cover more topics at greater expertise, wider
dissemination, only contribute when you have something meaningful to
add
Disadv: Some rules and selection
Options:
Academicblogs.co.uk
(Some general guidance about blogging on this network)
Where to blog

41. academicblogs.co.uk is a network
of research blogs hosted at the
University.
They support multi-author blogs by
research groups or larger units.
Where to blog

42. www.academicblogs.co.uk
Blogs are a great resource to
develop thought-leadership
To make visible (and gain credit
for) activities that aren’t visible
in your publications
Creating posts that capture
recent activity around a
publication or event helps you
to packages and keep track of
knowledge exchange events
and impact
Where to blog

43. Where to blog: elsewhere
Audit opportunities to guest blog:
Advantages: platform with pre-existing, captive audience,
sometimes with editorial input to hone your message
• What blogs do you consume?
• Funder blogs (ESRC, Wellcome, MRC)
• Professional societies
• NGOs, charities, interest groups
• Media, e.g. The Conversation

44. Where to blog
Mass media blog, e.g. The Conversation—speak to Rose-Marie, Jim, or the
Media Relations team.
Advantage: working with a professional editor to hone your piece.

45. Any questions?
(a longer version of this presentation, with other useful links, is available at the
Institute of Biodiversity website)