Using Social Media to Communicate Your Research
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An overview of how to best use social media in a research context. Covers blogs, twitter, facebook, video and audio tools.
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Using Social Media to Communicate Your Research
- 1. Using Social Media to Communicate Your Research Stephanie (Charlie) Farley, Social Media Officer http://edina.ac.uk/ Scottish Crucible, 21st April 2016, Edinburgh
- 2. Introduction
- 3. What is Social Media? • Social Media are any websites that allow you to contribute, to engage, and to connect with others and are “Web 2.0” tools (O’Reilly 2005). • Examples include: – Blogs (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc.) – Twitter – YouTube and Vimeo, Vine, Periscope, Meerkat – Facebook – Google+ – Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, Giphy, etc. – LinkedIn, Academia.edu, etc. – Mendeley, Delicious, Diigo, Reddit, etc. – FigShare – Stack Overflow, Jelly, GitHub
- 4. Why Use Social Media? Social media tools… • Are go-to spaces for expertise and advice. • Offer new ways to tell stories, to engage in dialogue, to reach out to your audience(s). • Rank highly on Google, Bing, etc. • Can enable direct access to key figures from Principal Investigators to Research Councils to press and potential research participants. • May generate media interest in your work, new collaborations and other unexpected opportunities. • Offer inexpensive ways to raise your own profile and that of your research.
- 5. What tools should you use? • Blogs - make your work visible, enable semi-formal ways to share working methods and progress, and provide a way to find and engage in dialogue with your audience. • Twitter - very effective way to share key research updates, track news and events in your field, build a network, find peer support and advice. • Video or Audio - brings clarity to complex concepts quickly. Well-made short videos or animations can communicate complex concepts quickly, accessibly, and in engaging sharable ways. • Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, etc. – images bring a project to life. Research is about people, ideas, events, collaboration, equipment - images make your ideas, achievements and discoveries far more tangible.
- 6. What should you share? • What your research is about and what it aims to achieve. • Processes, updates, changes of approach – to the extent that such transparency is appropriate and acceptable. • Quirky, playful and accessible content around your work and research area. • Publications, presentations, press mentions and materials that reflect research outputs and expertise. • CHECK ANY EXISTING PRIVACY, NON-DISCLOSURE OR SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES AND ENSURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE OR ACTIVITY COMPLIES.
- 8. Facebook: I Fucking Love Science https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience http://www.iflscience.com/categories/technology
- 10. Twitter & Vine: #6secondscience https://twitter.com/search?q=%236secondscience http://6secondscience.tumblr.com/
- 11. Multiple Platforms: Joe Hanson http://www.itsoka http://www.itsoka
- 12. Multiple Platforms: Joe Hanson
- 13. Planning Social Media Use • What do you want to achieve? Do you have specific goals? What do you want to share about your research. • Identify and locate your audience(s): who do you want to reach? Where do they hang out online? How is your work relevant to their interests? • Be pragmatic - what best fits your project’s style, expertise, and time availability? • Brand your presences and apply this consistently across all your accounts. • Keep up to date and relevant, review their effectiveness, and ensure they represent your work as you want it to be seen.
- 14. Planning Social Media Content • Complete your profile information. Interlink your accounts and always link back to your definitive research profiles and project websites. • Be consistent – both in your content and its regularity. • Listen to and engage with the audiences you are reaching out to. • Be creative – what social media tools could help you to communicate in new ways? Don’t be afraid to try something new.
- 15. What should not be shared • Commercially sensitive data or other material your employer/PI would not want shared or that might breach guidelines. • Personal information about colleagues, participants, those at partner organisation that might breach Data Protection law or ethical guidance. • Material (images, discussion board posts, tweets, etc.) that might impact on your own professional reputation or the credibility of your research. • Anything you would not want a funder, professional peer, project partner, or future employer to see or read.
- 16. Useful Resources • LSE. 2013. Impact of Social Sciences blog. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/ • Minocha, Shailey and Petre, Marian. 2012. UK: Vitae Innovate and Open University. Available from: http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/upload/Vitae_Innovate_Open_University_Social_Media_Han . • O’Reilly, T. 2005. What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. In O’Reilly, 30th September 2005. Available from: http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html • Patel, S. 2011. 10 ways researchers can use Twitter. In Networked Researcher, 3rd August 2011. Available from: http://www.networkedresearcher.co.uk/2011/08/03/10-ways-researchers-can-use-twitter/ Privacy Settings Links: • Facebook Privacy Settings: http://www.facebook.com/help/privacy • LinkedIn Privacy Settings: http://learn.linkedin.com/settings/ • Guide to Google+ Privacy Settings: http://lifehacker.com/5827683/a-guide-to-google%252B-privacy-and-information-control/
- 17. Managing Your Identity Online Useful Search Engine • Google: http://www.google.com and Google Blog Search: http://www.google.co.uk/blogsearch/ • Bing: http://www.bing.com/ and Bing Social Search: http://www.bing.com/social/ • Twitter Search: https://twitter.com/#!/search-home • Social Mention: http://www.socialmention.com/ • Whos talkin: http://whostalkin.com/ • Social Searcher: http://www.social-searcher.com/ • SmashFuse: http://www.smashfuse.com/ Useful Tools for Automatic Checking and Task Management • Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts • IFTTT: https://ifttt.com/ • Hootsuite: https://hootsuite.com/ • TweetDeck: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
Editor's Notes
- Social media are go-to places for expertise and advice – that can benefit you both for your own information finding and for proving yourself as an expert in your community. Setting up your own presence allows others to differentiate between you and others with same/similar names or roles and establish yourself in the way you want to. Social media sites rank highly on Google Key figures – CEOs, Senior Managers, Research Councils, Leading Academics and Researchers, etc. are much more accessible via social media allowing you to build a great network. Social Media can lead to collaboration, employment, speaking, and other opportunities. Social media gives you a way to raise your profile for engaging, outreach etc.
- #6SecondScience is a great fun example of what can be achieved with short form media. General Electric began sharing six second science lesson videos using a Vine, a short-form video sharing service where users can share six-second-long looping video clips. The videos grew quickly in popularity and General Electric used this to generate further interest by opening up the theme as a fair, calling for submissions and posting the best of these on a Tumblr account from which fans can further share the Vines on FB, Twitter, or their own Tumblr.