Social Media to Promote Research: Tips & Advice

• COPE: Create Once Publish Everywhere: When you create new content on one platform (e.g. a YouTube video), share it across any other platforms you are using (twitter, LinkedIn, your blog etc.) to help promote it and reach different audiences and communities online
   
• Think about who your target audience is and what message you want to communicate - a social media strategy can help with this
   
• Try to engage with people as much as possible - this will help to build your network
   
• Make sure your profiles are kept up to date with accurate information so other users can identify you easily - reference or link your profiles where possible (e.g. include your blog URL on your twitter profile)
   
• Try to post content that will engage people - images work particularly well for this, so include them in your tweets, blog posts etc. 

Professional vs. Personal Accounts/Identities

• Some academic social media sites allow you to link your accounts with your Facebook account. Do you want to merge your personal accounts with your professional ones?
• Overly aggressive privacy settings might be counterproductive for professional social media accounts, because you want certain information about you to be easily found and showcased.
• That being said, don't ever put sensitive information on your social media profiles.

Don't be (or feed) a Troll!

• What's a troll?
• The first contact someone makes with you might very well be online through your online persona or writings, before they ever meet you in person so think about the impression you might be making with your comments and posts.
• Try to avoid getting into arguments or disagreements online, particularly with prominent people in your field.
• If you do get into a debate, or disagreement, try to keep your contributions positive and polite, and consider taking the discussion to email or private messages if you want to continue the conversation.

Your Rights ... and Copyright, too.

• Be sure to read the terms and conditions of any social media site before creating an account.
• Most of the time you retain copyright to anything you create or post on a social media site, but nearly all of them have a clause that grants them a license to use your content in any way they wish.
• Don't post content on social media sites that you don't want to share with the whole world.
• If you want to post content, protect yourself by adding a copyright statement (or Creative Commons licence) on your materials.
• Respect other people's copyright rights, too.  Don't post anything unless you have permission, or are allowed via Creative Commons licence.