Enhancing Your Digital Profile (for Researchers)
Reference List
April 2021
For those who were able to attend last nights rescheduled webinar on “Enhancing
Your Digital Profile for Researchers”, a special thanks for making it at the
new time. What I hope came across through the session was that having an online
profile to represent yourself and your research goes way beyond “what should I
post on Facebook”, but includes a longer and deeper communications strategy
about yourself and your research, and of course, consideration as to the
academic platforms that you can consider to use for these purposes.
In putting together the later part of the webinar, I found the following
resources particularly useful. Some are quite deep reading, and of course, in
scope, more than I could ever cover in an hour. It is recommended for you to
check out segments that you are interested in understanding better, and seeing
how you can embrace and activate the advice given.
You are always welcome to drop me an email if you’d like to discuss any
further.
What to Share and Not
to Share
Self-Plagiarism
Protect Your Privacy
https://ischool.syr.edu/infospace/2018/05/02/how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-social-media/
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/aug/12/social-media-law-an-essential-guide
Copyright in the Digital Age
https://www.aaup.org/article/copyright-academics-digital-age#.W4-RLxgrKUk
Sharing Your Data Online
https://researchdata.ox.ac.uk/home/sharing-your-data/to-share-or-not-to-share/
Managing Risks and Conflict
Trolls and Online Criticism
https://egrollman.com/2014/10/07/trolls/
https://www.themdu.com/guidance-and-advice/guides/dealing-with-online-criticism
Handling Social Media Harassment
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/05/29/dealing-social-media-harassment-opinion
Opportunities & Risks With Social Media
for Academia
Practicing Effective Digital
Behaviours
Ethics and Etiquette
https://www.compukol.com/social-media-ethics-and-etiquette/
Nine (9) Social Media Guidelines for Academics
https://www.york.ac.uk/staff/research/governance/research-policies/social-media/
Academic trolls & Trolling
How to Avoid Making Blunders Online
https://tophat.com/blog/social-media-academics-avoiding-blunders/
Digital Identity Health Check for Academics
https://career-advice.jobs.ac.uk/resources/digital-identity-health-check-for-academics/
Using Digital & Social
Media to Boost Your Research Impact and Engagement
Six
(6) strategies extracted from Dr Zali Yager.
Brand Your Research
Give
it a name- researchers have always been good at creating a great acronym for
their project, but let’s go further than that. If your project has a name,
social media accounts, a webpage, and a logo, it can really help people to
engage with it- whether they be gatekeepers, participants, or the media.
Depending on the lifetime, and scope of work for your project, I recommend
having a logo as a minimum branding tool. If you don’t have money for a fancy
designer, you can use Canva, or a free trial of the logomaker app to develop
one for free, or Fiver to outsource the job at low cost. The social media world
is much more likely to engage with your work if it is a branded entity that can
be easily understood, rather than engaging with you as a researcher.
Know Your Audience
Who
do you want to talk to, and where do they hang out? Adolescents are on
Snapchat, 29-45 year olds are on Pinterest, 30+ year olds are on Facebook.
Twitter and Linkedin are more ‘Professional’. It would be a full-time job alone
to have a presence on all of these platforms, and companies that do employ
multiple social media managers, and scheduling tools in order to post across
all platforms multiple times a day. So have a think about who you really need
to engage, and where they might be online in order to preserve your energy and
efforts. Think about the people that you want to communicate with- are they
parents of children with a particular condition? Try a Facebook Group. If you
want to communicate with health professionals to influence their practice? Try
Twitter and Linkedin. Instagram has the largest health and fitness audience.
Try just setting up one account under your research brand, on one of these
platforms and get it working before you go all out. The bonus? Facebook and Instagram
are connected so if you post in one, it can automatically update in the other.
Tag Tag Tag
Hashtags
(on Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin) are crucial to expanding your reach to
people that might be interested in your post. You need to spend some time
researching and curating your hashtag strategy if you want your posts to have
the most effect. The clever women at Startups for Grownups have hashtag advice
direct from the experts.
Make it Pretty
Social
media is a visual feast. All of the other content on there is really quite
aesthetically pleasing- that’s why people consume it! Graphic design doesn’t
always come naturally to those with PhD’s, so if you want to keep up, use
Canva. Even better, try video. Apparently video has 1200% more engagement- but
there’s no reference for that statistic! Nothing fancy needed, just you and
your phone and a quiet space. Why not share a quick summary of an amazing
keynote or conference presentation that you saw? Or behind-the-scenes peeks
into our world as a researcher? Even just your elevator pitch of what your
project is about and what you hope to achieve with it? Or why you do what you
do? Show your personality, passion, and enthusiasm- it doesn’t have to be
perfect, in fact it’s probably better if you are human and relatable, over
being robotic and scripted.
Know When to Post
If
recruitment is top on my list of ‘to-do’s’ for the day, I’ll want to post
something as soon as I sit down at my desk… bad idea! There’s actually a lot of
data and science behind the best time to post on social media. Much of it is
conflicting information- Just be sure to do a little bit of research about the
best time to post for your particular audience, for your particular platforms.
Most of it makes sense, like posting around 3-4 pm and 8-9 pm for mums, ie-
when they pick the kids up from school, and when they go to bed! This blog post
details timings by category for more detailed information (from a trusted
source).
Collaborate!
It’s
really really, really hard to get engaged followers on social media. You
probably thought it would be easy, but then by the time all of your friends and
family have followed you, and a few randoms, you still only have 100-200
followers.
If
you want to really save time on social media, and only need it for recruitment
for a one-off project, you don’t actually have to set up your own accounts and
pages, you can just work with those who already have a really large following
of the people that you want to speak to, and approach them to publish a guest
blog piece.
So
have a bit of a look around and see who has the audience that you want- but
think about what you have that they might be interested in… Many Facebook
Groups are not allowing researchers to post just for recruitment any more. The
approach used in sales (and let’s face it, we are selling an idea) is that you
need to give before you receive. You could try asking if you could be a guest
expert on a podcast, or provide a blog post for content around your expertise
that could contribute, and then ask for people to complete your survey…
(NOTE: Reference to come for Dr Yegar's content)
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