Researcher KnowHow session presented by Amy Lewin, Marketing and Innovation Coordinator, and Sarah Roughley Barake, Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Liverpool Library
1. Altmetric and Social Media
Sarah Roughley Barake
Scholarly Communications
Librarian
sarah13@liverpool.ac.uk
Amy Lewin
Marketing and Innovation
Coordinator
Amy.Lewin@liverpool.ac.uk
2. What are altmetrics?
Altmetrics can be defined as:
“a set of methods based in the social
web used to measure, track and
analyse scholarly output.”
Roemer, R. C. & Borchadt, R. (2015) Meaningful metrics:
a 21st century librarians guide to bibliometrics, altmetrics
and research impact. Chicago: ACRL.
3. What is actually measured?
‒Click and views
‒Downloads
‒Captures (e.g. bookmarking)
‒Favouriting or liking
‒Mentions
‒Shares
‒Tweets
4. So altmetrics can give
you an indication of:
• The amount of attention a
paper has received on the
social web
• How widely something has
been disseminated (i.e. it’s
reach)
• The potential influence and
impact a paper has had e.g.
has it contributed to public
policy discussions and
development?
5. Potential issues with altmetrics
• The potential for them to be ‘gamed’ e.g.
people disingenuously tweeting about a paper
• They mean nothing without the context
• (Relatively) new type of metric
• They should not be used alone rather as a
compliment to traditional bibliometrics
6. How can altmetrics
be used?
• Keep track of who is engaging
with your research and how
they are using it
• This can be useful in job and
funding applications
• Find new people or
organisations to engage with
and further disseminate your
work
• Greater dissemination leads to
more potential impact
7. Altmetric
• Founded in 2011
• Tracks: F1000 peer reviews, Wikipedia
citations, public policy documents, research
blogs, mainstream news, Mendeley, Facebook,
Twitter and more…
• Came up with the Altmetric “donut”
8. Using social media to increase
the reach of your research
Strategy:
1. Purpose – what are your goals?
2. Audience – who is your target audience?
3. Define your channels – where can I reach the
target audience and communicate my
message?
4. Audit – what are others doing?
9. Using social media to increase
the reach of your research
Planning - 60/40 content split
Evaluate – have you achieved your goals?
10. Social Media Top tips
Outreach and collaboration
Tone and timing
Look and feel
Make the most of social media features
Engage!
1. Defining your goals will help to ensure that you are putting time into creating content and using channels that will help you to achieve them and allow you to measure your success.
Identifying why you will be using social media will make it easier to set goals. What do you want to achieve and what do you want people to do?
Reaching and engaging with our users, promoting research and increasing awareness, informing, gaining insights
2. Who? Segment your audience. Different social media platforms have different user demographics (age, gender, profession) and just because you use a social media platform in your personal life, it doesn't necessarily mean that this platform will work for you professionally, and vice versa.
3. Spend most time on the platforms where your audience are and, even if it takes time to develop your approach and build a following, it will be worth the effort to reach the right audience.
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn?
4. Research what others in your field are doing and learn from them. What works and what doesn’t?
Planning – 60% entertaining, interesting, funny, engaging, aesthetically pleasing and 40% promotion.
The following are some important questions to ask when creating content for social media:
What message am I trying to communicate?
What type of media should we use, and which platform is it best suited to?
Evaluate – so you know if it’s working and you can make changes if it’s not.
Feature on blogs, collaborate on creating content, reach out to accounts/users with large followings in your field and build relationships
2. Develop a consistent tone/voice/niche (entertaining/funny, interesting, quirky, serious) and post when your followers are active – using insights to determine this
3. Create a look and feel that people will want to follow (i.e. is aesthetically pleasing) – this is particularly important for Instagram but can also make content more eye catching in general
4. Twitter chats (e.g. #librarychat,) polls, Instagram/Facebook story features
5. Respond to comments, start conversations, share others’ content…
