This document provides advice for academics on developing an online presence and using social media professionally. It discusses setting up profiles on platforms like Google Scholar, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate. It also provides tips for blogging, networking, engaging different audiences, and maintaining an online identity. The overall message is that developing an online presence can help with collaboration, publishing, career opportunities, and broader impact and engagement.

1. Dr HelenWebster
Researcher Development
University of Cambridge

2.  Requests on a post-it!

3. …If I were to Google
you, RIGHT NOW, what
might I find?

4. Enhancing or changing practice?
 Networking and professional profiles
 Publishing Models: Open Access Publishing, self-
promotion by authors
 Quality Assessment Models: Altmetrics
 Funding: Collaboration, consortia and large projects
 Conference ‘attendance’ –
livetweeting, livestreaming, liveblogging, podcasting
 Impact: narrowcasting online and digital resources
 Pedagogy: digital classroom, ‘pedagogy of abundance’
 Survival:The job market is more competitive…

5. Open mindedness and confidence
in exploring:
 New tools and uses
 New values
 New behaviours

6. SOCIAL MEDIA ACADEMIA
 Open
 Shared*
 Personalised
 Single identity for all
aspects
 Monetarised
 Collaborative and creative
 Freedom of speech
 Democratic
 Emergent, early release
 Dialogue, participation
 IP and ‘ownership of ideas’
 Limited sharing
 Objective
 Separate professional
identity
 Free
 Collaboration within limits
 Peer review
 Professional behaviour
 Lengthy editing
 Limited dialogue

7. Broadcasting
Networking
Sharing and creating

10. DRHELENWEBSTER (HELEN
WEBSTER, H M WEBSTER?)
SCHOLASTIC_RAT/ RATTUS
SCHOLASTICUS

11. DR JONATHAN
BARNARD,CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY
PROF. DENYS
TURNER, MEDIEVAL STUDIES

12. Platforms:
 The academic web:
 Department webpage
 Google Scholar profile
 ORCID
 ResearcherID
 Academia.edu
 Researchgate
 Methodspace
 The open web
 Google+ profile
 LinkedIn
 Gravatar
 Flavours.me or About.me
 Your own website?
 Set up a Google alert for your name
 Think about your metadata and
keyword search terms
 link to ‘authority’ sites and have them
link to you (public bodies ie .ac.uk)
 Interlink your social media accounts
 Complete profiles as much as
possible including photos
 Collate your identity – consistent
username, profile picture and
strapline (try namechk)
 Disambiguate your profile

13.  What do you want to achieve?
 Who is your audience?
 What do you want to tell them?

14.  Mindmap all of the types of audience who
might look for or stumble across your
professional profile online
 Where do they overlap?
 What might they want from you?

15.  Potential collaborators
 Potential readers
 Peers (i.e. other early career researchers)
 Journal editors and publishers
 Conference organisers
 Journalist
 Potential employer or PI
 Members of the public (who?)
 Other professional sectors
 Your students

16. Research
Professional
activities
Impact and
public
engagement
Teaching
Admin
and service

17. Think about your own social
media consumption.
• What works?
• What doesn’t work?

18.  Documents: Scribd, Issuu
 Slides: Slideshare, Prezi
 Images: Flickr
 Livestreaming: Ustream, Livestream
 Various formats as PDFs: Academia.edu
 Bibliographies: Mendeley
 Research data and outputs: institution
repository
 CreativeCommons Licensing

19.  Video:Youtube,Vimeo
 Audio: Soundcloud, Audioboo
 Text: Blog (Wordpress, Blogger,Tumblr)
 Screencasts or Slidecasts:
Screencast.com,Youtube, Slideshare
 Curation:Tumblr, Scoop.it, Storify, Delicious

20.  What will your blog focus on?
 Who are the primary (and secondary) audience?
 What will they get out of it?
 How will they read it? (follow every post?The
occasional post? Stumble on isolated posts?)
 Will it be a group or individual blog?
 What will posts be like (tone, length, level of
detail etc)
 How frequently will you update, and how long
will the blog last?
 What other media will you create and embed?

21. Academics in your field:
 Primary audience: potential readers
 Secondary audiences: publishers, journal editors, potential
collaborators, conference organisers)
The general public:
 Primary audience: practitioners
 Secondary audiences: policy makers, journalists, the general public
Your peers:
 Primary audience: Other academics at a particular stage of career
 Secondary audience: potential employers, useful contacts and
colleagues

23.  Tie your online presence together with high-
activity networking platforms:Twitter, LinkedIn.
 Set automatic updates whenever you post new
material to alert people
 Make things easily shareable (include subscribe
or share ‘buttons’ to other social network
platforms where possible)
 Link to more permanent online presences
including university websites
 Think about multiple routes to find you
 Think about metadata, search terms and
tagging

24. Some part
of your
online
profile
Googles your name
Googles your subject
area
Follows a link
Follows you / someone
you know

25.  Don’t just broadcast. Make it a meaningful
and genuine exchange
 Make it useful to them, not just you! And also
make it usable to them.
 Reciprocate:
reply, reblog/retweet, respond, ask, share, cu
rate, comment, endorse and ‘like’
 Get other people to contribute or commission
material
 Tailor material for very specific audiences
(but with an eye to wider relevance)

26.  Start with pre-existing networks around you
 Draw contacts from other social media accounts
 Search engines:Google, Social Media search engines, built-in search
boxes in platforms Listorious, Socialmention,Technorati
 Search keywords, people’s names
 Snowball- see who well-connected people and
institutions, professional bodies are connected to
 Use suggestions algorithms
 Follow/connect/like/friend people (they will probably look at your
profile and follow you back or accept your request!)
 Set automatic updates whenever you update – give them something
to look at

27.  For your blog, think about how to build a
network around it.What sorts of people
might you follow/encourage to follow you
and how would you find them?
 Write FIVE tweets (140 characters or less)
which might catch the interest of this
audience.
 ONLY ONE of these tweets can be directly
about the blog!