Build your academic profile

Most complete coverage of an author's publications. Includes all document types, updates automatically and displays Google Scholar Citations and h-index. Go to My Citations and set up your profile. Make your profile public. Upload your photo, connect to QUT Academic Profile, with added LinkedIn or Twitter tabs if you are interested in social media promotion of your research.

Automatically searches and updates your publications. However the more the author maintains and enriches their profile the more effective will be this tool in attracting attention metrics and potential collaborations.

The Socials are now virtually useless as a communication tool. maybe they are ok for building brand awareness, but individual schools and units like the one I work in, should not waste their time. Besides, we’re starting to see Zoomers in the PhD now and ‘Contact us on Facebook!’ is, as the Youngs would say, cringe. Good luck getting access to their discord servers (this is where they are bitching about your teaching in real time, just so you know).
Think – really think – before incorporating social media use in your teaching. My nephew was recently made to sign up to Twitter to participate in a class. There’s no excuse for this – the teacher should know Twitter is an unsafe, nazi-troll invested, transphobic hell scape. As @knitrospective on Threads pointed out, making people engage on Twitter, at least right now, is both unethical and unsafe.
I give the same advice about social media to academics as I do to women asking what to wear: do whatever the hell you want. Share your work – or not. If you share it, stop worrying about click throughs and views as you have little control over who will see it unless you pay. I guess paying is an option, but personally I’d rather not – but you do you.
Social media can just be… social. It’s ok to just have fun and chat with people. Low key ‘academic networking’ (or as we should call it ‘making nerdy friends’) is a good thing. As @academicbatgirl said to me on Threads “(I use it to) find my squad, share practises, laugh, lament, laugh some more, find good people I’d like to collaborate with”. Wise words.
Use platforms to share, but not to author stuff: everyone who built an audience by writing Twitter threads instead of blogging is now having regrets. Tik Tokers are going to feel the same soon, if not already. Always own your ‘content’. At the very least, have a simple website-repository where people can find your stuff easily. Dare I say it, maybe Blogs will come back and I will be fashionable again.
If you invest more time in building anything to try and ‘increase your reach’, make it a mailing list. You can do this by simply putting up a google form, although there are plenty of more sophisticated options. Email is still the best distribution medium of them all: cost free and free from algorithms. I just started a mailing list for people interested in my neurodiversity in the PhD research – I already have 160 or so people signed up, which is so incredible (thank you!). I plan to use this list to test out research ideas and get feedback on research in progress. Much more effective than shouting into the wind on Threads or something.
Pace yourself. Work out where and when to have conversations based on the amount of energy you want to commit to being present. You don’t have to open yourself up on all channels, all the time. Sometimes it’s better to log off and just do your research.