This presentation formed part of the HEA workshop on Professional Presences For Academics and looked at the different social sites on which academics should develop an online presence in order to promote themselves, engage students and employers and publicise their research.
4. 4
Plan For The Day
10:00am Welcome and Housekeeping
Thomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
10:05am Professional Development At Birmingham City University
David While – Birmingham City University
10:15am Constructing A Professional Presence For Academics
Thomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
11:00am Leveraging Your Online Presence To Develop A
Professional Learning Network
Sue Beckingham – Sheffield Hallam University
11:30am Coffee
12:00pm Practical Computer Session On Constructing Professional
Presences
Thomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
1:00pm Lunch
2:00pm Employability From The Higher Education Academy
Mark Ratcliffe – Higher Education Academy
2:15pm Examples Of Online Promotion For Academics
Thomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
2:35pm Questions and Discussion
3:00pm Finish
5. HEA Computing 2012 Workshop
“Enhancing The Employability Of Computing
Students Through An Online Professional
Presence”
http://www.bcu.ac.uk/tee/events/previous-
events/employability-workshop
Contains copies of talks and set of teaching
materials (the “step by step” what to do)
5
We Are Following On From…
8. “Savvy scientists must increasingly engage
with blogs and social media. A new
generation of young researchers has grown
up with an ever-present Internet. Publishers
have been quicker than academics to react to
this new world, but scientists must catch up.
Even if you choose not to blog, you can
certainly expect that your papers and ideas
will increasingly be blogged about. So there it
is — blog or be blogged.”
8
Paul Knoepfler (In nature)
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110727/full/475425a.htm
l
9. Personal marketing
Personal brand building
Media, research and speaking opportunities
(contacts)
Career prospects
Promotion of university and course
Promotion of wider research area
“Humanisation” of research
Demonstrate social media and employability
interests to students
9
Why A Professional
Presence?
10. Your Professional Presence is the cumulative set
of web sites, online contributions and social media
profiles which define who you are to someone
looking at you online
Often, this is in addition to any information supplied about you to
your university
Can direct people to a preferred view of yourself
Can rely on people directly finding out about you
using search engines/links/recommendations
10
What Do We Mean?
(Informal)
11. Selectiveness!
It is impossible to be active with every single
social media website and opportunity out there
This workshop will take a balanced view looking
at some of the services (both general and
academically aimed) which it is worth considering
joining
However, you should pick and choose which of these opportunities
are most suitable for you to engage further with…
Most of this workshop relates to “what I do…”
11
Immediate Principle
19. Professional Website
Contribution to Institutional Web Sites
Social Media Presence
Academic Research Profiles
External contributions to increase overall visibility
What Makes A Good
Professional Presence
21. Important to make yourself “findable” in Google
Want to receive invitations to progress yourself
Industrial engagement
Contacts to work with students
Speaking engagements
21
Ranking
24. Work out what “moniker” you will use to represent
yourself online
Decide on the main marketing text and images
that you can use to represent yourself
Set up your Facebook account and Google
account (as so many other services require
these/integrate with these)
Work out when/how you will keep your sites and
profiles current and accurate
24
Pre-Planning
27. Very important – the web site is owned by you
and transferrable
Should relate “your name” in some format
Should be a .com or .co.uk, ideally without
hyphens
e.g. yourname.com
Website contains general background and
information about you relative to your career (e.g.
expertise, teaching and research)
27
Professional Website
29. Ideally part of your main website
e.g. yourname.com/blog
Can also be hosted by a third party service
e.g. hosted WordPress, hosted Blogger
But, you lose some control
Create posts relating to the wider interests within
your subjects (the news, your teaching, your
research)
29
Your Blog
31. Important to own your Facebook identity
Register a “vanity url”
Use the privacy settings to control who can see
what parts of your profile
There are many differing views about how to use
Facebook within education
Use apps like BranchOut to monitor professional
contacts
31
Facebook
34. A Google account is necessary to access many
widely used services
Try and establish a recognisable name that can
be used on many social sites
34
Google Account
35. Google+ is Google’s social network and the
results can feature in Google search engine
results
Google Authorship of blog posts currently a
powerful way to get search engine traffic
35
Google+
37. 2nd biggest search engine in the world
Many people are visual learners and head directly
to YouTube
Short videos can relate to teaching, research
37
YouTube
41. Popular site used to collect and share images
Replicates “pinning” images to a noticeboard
Can pin your own images or curate them from
other sources
Infographics popular for sharing
41
Pinterest
43. Provides short updates about areas of interest
Promote events and activities
Often used to produce a “second level of
networking” within academia
43
Twitter
46. Profiles on institutional web sites are valued
But they can sometimes be difficult to take control of
They rank well in the search engines
46
Institutional Web Sites
49. The LinkedIn Publications view can be used to list
all of your academic publications
Use the Abstract to provide the content to match
with the publication
The suggestion is to link these directly to the
official source for the publication (such as the
Digital Object Identifier page)
LinkedIn
58. Provides a search engine for academic literature
Used widely in the industry due to its convenience
Makes available a Profile Page showing citations
and reach of the research
Monitor who has cited your work
Can manually add missing publications
58
Google Scholar
61. Alternative academic search, but with fewer direct
options for academics
Can edit publication details, but needs manual
verification by Microsoft
61
Microsoft Academic Search
63. Unique identifier given to each researcher to
manage their publication lists
Solves the problem where multiple researchers share similar names
Generate citation metrics
Integrates with ORCID
63
ResearcherID
72. Used mainly to share copies of slides
Can also be used to share other types of documents
Useful for widely circulating copies of
presentations
Can be provide presentations in a format whereby
they can be embedded within other pages (similar
to YouTube videos)
SlideShare
75. Keeping everything up to date!
Work out processes for:
Adding a new teaching area
Publishing a new academic paper
The Biggest Challenge
76. What does your profile on each site look to:
A standard person who finds the site through a search engine?
A non-logged in user who follows the link to your profile?
A logged in user on the site?
What other information is being posted on the
Internet about you?
76
The Checks
77. Use sites like Klout.com
Measures your engagement with others on sites
like Twitter and Facebook
77
Finding Out Your Influence