A Guide to Twitter for Monash Researchers
Office of the Senior Vice-Provost and Vice-Provost Research
The information in this guide has been collated from the insights of Monash academics who use Twitter effectively to promote their research and Monash social media experts.
- Monash Social Media Policy (Section 3.5 outlines unacceptable use of social media)
- Monash Media and Public Comment Procedure
- SMC creating a social media account page
If you would like to set up a Twitter account for your lab or research project, talk to your Faculty marketing team before you get started. If you would like to set up and/or optimise a Twitter account for yourself and your research please read this guide.
THE BENEFITS OF USING TWITTER AS A RESEARCHER
HOW TO SET UP YOUR RESEARCH TWITTER PROFILE
THE BASICS OF ENGAGING WITH TWITTER AS A RESEARCHER
THE BENEFITS OF USING TWITTER AS A RESEARCHER
Effective use of Twitter has many benefits to a researcher, some of which are listed below.
USING TWITTER CAN BOOST YOUR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)
SEO determines where in the list websites (eg. your PURE profile, lab website or Twitter profile) appear when someone searches for a keyword on Google. If you want people to see your name or research when they search for information about your field on google then SEO is key. Read this Forbes article to learn the SEO basics.
TWITTER ENGAGEMENT CAN TRANSLATE INTO ALTMETRICS AND CITATIONS
Watch this video to hear from the Faculty of Education’s Professor Neil Selwyn about his approach to this.
GET YOUR RESEARCH THE ATTENTION OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA
If you are actively promoting your research and communicating its value to the general public, this may put your work on the radar of the mainstream media who may feature it in a related story or ask you to comment as an expert in the field.
FOSTER RESEARCH CONNECTIONS AND COLLABORATIONS
Twitter is an easy way to build on your involvement in the community of local/global researchers in your field and connect with field leaders or Twitter research influences. Watch this video to hear from the Faculty of Science’s Associate Professor Francine Marques about her approach to this.
TWITTER CAN HELP YOU KEEP UP TO DATE WITH FIELD BREAKING NEWS
You can curate yourself a personalised home timeline by following key researchers, institutions, funding bodies and journalists in your field. If you spend 10 minutes every morning looking at your twitter feed you will be able to keep up to date breaking news and trends in your field. You could also drive field centric conversations by tweeting about your new research or retweeting on others.
HOW TO SET UP YOUR RESEARCH TWITTER PROFILE
If you would like to set up a Twitter account for your lab or research project, talk to your faculty marketing team before you get started. If you would like to set up and/or optimise a Twitter account for yourself and your research please continue.
If you are brand new to twitter you may want to start by reading the New User FAQ and then follow the steps below.
- Sign up
- Choose a handle (aka username)
It is best to use your full name or publication name, if those are taken you could think about including numbers or something related to your research with your name. - Write a bio for your profile pageWrite a short bio (it can only be 160 characters) that explains your professional expertise and interests. If you are comfortable (and have space) adding a sentence about your outside of work interests can add an air of authenticity to your profile. If you are finding it tricky have a look at these profiles as examples of best practice @garrett_geoff, @ozajmacintyre and @ProfSPickering.
- Upload a professional photo to your profile page
Avoid cropping yourself out of an existing group photo as this does not look overly professional. - Upload a banner picture to your profile page
Use an image that relates to your area of research or a photo of Monash campus. - Start following other Twitter accounts
Try curating a field based news feed for yourself by following other researchers in your field, research leaders, institutions, funding bodies and journalists.
Examples: Monash University, Professor Margaret Gardner, Professor Marc Parlange, ARC, NHMRC , CSIRO , NYTimes, Nature and Science
THE BASICS OF ENGAGING WITH TWITTER AS A RESEARCHER
The first thing that you need to understand when you start out with any social media platform that is new to you is that you don’t need to start out as a pro! You can build up your skills gradually and with them also build your audience.
START BY WATCHING
Understand the use of twitter in your research area by following 50 interesting people related to your field, essentially curating your own newsfeed, that you will be able to check easily and regularly by visiting your home timeline. You could also follow or curate lists of twitter accounts in different fields and toggle between them to just see content related to that category or field.
Watch this video to hear from the Faculty of Education’s Professor Neil Selwyn about his approach to this.
CHECK CONSISTENTLY
Reserve 10 minutes a day in your calendar to check your home timeline, if you check it every day that is fantastic but aim for twice a week minimum.
ACTIVELY CURATE YOUR FEED
Review who you are following on a regular basis and change them (if need be) based on your current research focus.
HOW TO GAIN AN AUDIENCE
You don’t have to tweet until you feel comfortable and ready to do so. Slow and steady is the best approach to building an engaged audience. It really can be slow, you might get little or no engagement to begin with, that’s normal so don’t be discouraged!
A great way to start building an audience on twitter is by liking, retweeting, quote tweeting or replying to tweets from others in your field. Watch this video to hear from the Faculty of Science’s Associate Professor Francine Marques about her approach to engaging with colleagues via twitter.
LIKING
Liking a tweet is the fastest form of interaction on twitter but it does have an impact and opens the door to more meaningful twitter engagement with colleagues or leaders in your field.
REPLYING
Replying to others tweets with interesting insights is one of the best ways to begin with more active engagement, this approach may even get you likes and followers.
RETWEETING
Retweeting is an easy and fast way to share content and increase your visibility. However, be aware that retweeting content produced by others without adding your own comment is effectively an endorsement of that content. For example if you are retweeting a colleagues paper ensure that you have read it and agree with the arguments and/or conclusions. If you want to comment on a Tweet (for example that you disagree with or want to add an insight), you can retweet it with your comment added, called a quote tweet.
QUOTE TWEETING
One of the best ways to start building your audience is by quote tweeting interesting news or content about your field with a couple of sentences explaining your take on it.
When it comes to endorsements there is a little more flexibility with quote tweeting as you can add your own perspective to someone else's work but it is good practice to still be mindful and ensure that you have thoroughly read and understood the content that you are sharing.
TWEETING
There are a few tried and tested ways of engaging the audience with your tweets. You could try sharing an interesting story or insight, asking a question that will start a conversation or including a captivating image, video or GIF in your post.
MENTIONING OTHERS
You can alert specific people and organisations to your tweet by mentioning them using the @ symbol and their Twitter handle, eg @monashuniversity. Ensure that you do not start a tweet with a mention as this will limit the amount of people that see the tweet. If you’ve received research funding it’s a great idea to mention the funding body.
Example: “Fantastic to get funding from @arc for our project X” so the organisation will see you acknowledge them.
USING HASHTAGS
Use hashtags to engage in global conversations. Use ones that are specific to your field, before you use a hashtag review the content that has been posted using that hashtag to ensure that it is relatively widely used. Ensure that you use key Monash hashtags such as #MonashUniversity and #ChangeIt so that SMC are alerted to what you have posted and can choose to promote it.
BEING CONSISTENT
Be realistic from the outset about the amount that you will post and pace yourself to avoid twitter burn out. A key element of successfully building an audience is consistency, so you need to keep your posts regular.
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR OWN RESEARCH ON TWITTER
Once you have built an engaged audience it may be a good idea to move from predominantly sharing your perspective on field based news or content to tweeting about your own research and insights. Faculty of Science’s Associate Professor Francine Marques shares some great advice in this video about how to humbly promote your research.
If possible focus on your open access research, this will gain the most traction and may translate into citations or mainstream media attention. In this video Faculty of Education’s Professor Neil Selwyn explains the success he has had with this approach.
TROUBLESHOOTING
KEEPING IT PROFESSIONAL
You might want to keep your personal life and work life separate and find it hard to hit the right tone on social media, so interact with others on social media as you would with your colleagues at work, light content from your personal life is fine.
TROUBLE WITH TROLLS
It is unlikely that you will have trouble with trolls if you stick to tweeting about topics within your field of expertise. If you engage in political arguments it can get nasty, however, you can block accounts and reach out to your Faculty Marketing and Engagement team or SMC for support if you need it.
UNDERSTANDING BOTS
Bots are generally harmless, however, before you follow any accounts confirm that the content that is posted by the account is relevant to you.
DISCLAIMERS
It is advised that you add a disclaimer in your bio that states “all tweets are my own opinion”, see the official Monash Social Media Policy and Monash Media and Public Comment Procedure for more info.