success with social media - march munches
TRANSCRIPT
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
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
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