success with social media - march munches

LinkedIn is a social network

LinkedIn is your online portfolio

Not just a site to find a job…

…but it could help you find a job!

Use it to ‘stalk’ people (but not in a creepy way)

Join a wider community

LinkedIn features

Check out other people’s profiles for:

Inspiration and career building

Articles (both on LinkedIn and citations)

Join special interest groups One place where your professional identity lives

LinkedIn downsides

Can send out a lot of spam – edit your preferences

Does need maintaining

Privacy of having lots of personal info online

Getting invites from random strangers Can be very ‘business’ orientated…

Blogging

Share your work in your own words

Document your process

Maybe get pre-publication feedback

Blogging perks

Free services to use (Wordpress etc.)

Tap into a community of bloggers

Do more open science

Stake a claim to your research early on Share, be transparent, do good work

Use other social media to raise awareness and impact

Blogging downsides

Investment of time to do well

Pressure to communicate work accurately

Risk of getting scooped…

only you won’t

Twitter

Social micro-blogging

Twitter perks

Excellent for professional networking

Can reach many people with minimum

effort

Can start a conversation or keep one going

Discover news and events in your field

Easy to get involved and raise your profile

Twitter downsides

Conversation NOT a broadcast

Can be hard to limit your message to 140

characters

Can be overwhelming

Time commitment

Instagram

A picture is worth a thousand words

Instagram perks

Images can be easier to read than text

Global reach of images

Useful for attracting a different demographic

Popular with a younger audience

Instagram downsides

Only available as an app

Not all research can be communicated visually

Can be difficult to maintain

YouTube

Second largest search engine on the web

YouTube perks

Makes an impact

Allows you to ‘attend’ events

Videos highly ranked by search engines

Useful for attracting a non-academic audience

YouTube downsides

Time consuming

Producing good quality videos is a skill

Need to think about copyright

Not all research outputs suit the format