• Ethics & Professional Practice
• Making the Most of Social Media
• Copyright & Images
• Use of Images in Published Works
• Altmetrics
• Twitter & Research

• The Times Higher Education A-Z of Social Media for Academia
• Academic Social Networks (with details on promoting your research on Social Media) - Guide from the Office of Scholarly Communications  

What is social media and why should I use it?

The Oxford Dictionary defines social media as:

'websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.'

This guide will introduce some of the platforms available, how to use them and how social media can be incorporated into academia.

Please see the Making the Most of Social Media tab for further guidance

Diagram adapted from information in Carrigan, M. (2016) Social Media For Academics. London: SAGE. Available from the Faculty Library

Finding who to follow on Twitter

In order to find people Tweeting about areas you are interested in, it's important to make use of Twitter's search function.

Using this search box, you can search for people by both name and username. You can search for keywords in order to find people tweeting on a particular topic, or search for a hashtag.

For advanced search options please see this guide 

Manage your timeline by creating lists.

If you follow a lot of people of Twitter it can feel a little overwhelming. Twitter allows you to make lists of people, so you can check
them independently of your timeline.

To do this:

• Click on the profile and settings icon in the top right-hand corner (your profile picture)
• Select ‘create a new list’
• You can choose whether you want a public or private list
• To add someone to a list you can search for them, but you can also add them when you come across a profile that interests you by clicking on the cog, then selecting add or remove list and choosing the list you would like to add them to.

You do not have to follow someone to add them to a list.

Increasing your impact

• Add links to your articles – people are much more likely to check something out if they have a direct link to it! Links take up a lot of space in tweets – use a link shortening service such as owl.ly to reduce the length of links.
   
• Don’t forget your hashtags too! Adding hashtags allows your work to be found more easily by other Twitter users.
   
• Highlight some key points – don’t just post links on their own. What you write needs to encourage people to look at your work, and give them an idea about what it is about.
   
• Look at who is talking about and sharing your research – you may find a new person to follow. Even looking at the people your followers are following might help you find interesting people to follow and discuss research with.

There are multiple platforms on which you can create a blog. Two of the most prominent are Blogger and Wordpress.

These platforms are both freely available for all, and have a number of flexible designs and layouts.

What to think about when creating a blog

• Do a bit of research about the different blog platforms and select the one that suits your needs.
• Carefully create a meaningful username, as this will make up part of the web address of your blog, e.g. edfaclib.wordpress.com

Writing the content

Once you've made your blog, it's time to start writing and create some content! What you write about and the style you write in is up to you - but here are some good tips for getting started:

• Tips for blog beginners and general blogging: George Julian has written an excellent post about starting blogging here: Ten to tips for new blogger
• Tom Crick & Alan Winfield: Academic blogging - 10 top tips
• University of Kent: Resources For Writing Academic Blogs

As with all social media platforms it is important to consider the privacy and security options available to you.

• When you create a personal Facebook profile it is important to familiarize yourself with the different levels of privacy available to you. This includes who can see the content you post, including photos, how people can find you on Facebook (e.g. via searching for your name, by telephone number, by email) and who can message you and request to be friends. A Full list of privacy Facebook privacy settings can be found here.
   
• Your profile picture is public, and can be seen by anyone who is able to search for you. It is important that you consider the content of what you use as a profile picture, particularly if you are a teacher. A list of what information is public on Facebook can be found here.
   
• When creating a Facebook group examine the levels of access (open, closed and secret) available to you, and choose an appropriate one. Open groups can be joined by anyone with a Facebook profile, and can often need large amounts of moderation as all members will be able to post in them. The privacy settings for Facebook groups can be found here.

The Ethics & Professional Practice section of this guide contains further advice on social media privacy and ettiquette.