Why should academics be using social media? And which social media should they be using? There are so many tools and networks that could be of potential use to scholars that it can be difficult to keep track.
糖心Vlog has teamed up with Andy Miah, chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford, to offer you the definitive guide to the social media tools available to academics, and how you can use them as you go about your scholarly work. There are many, many tools, but we have tried to give an idea of how higher education professionals might use them.
We will strive to keep this page as up to date as possible. If you think that we are missing anything, please let us know by tweeting .
More social media resources
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Tips for academics: blogging and social media
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Introduction by听Andy Miah (), chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford:
鈥淭his resource accompanies the听听email list for academics and university support staff, sharing info about the latest platforms for use by academics in their professional lives.听It will update periodically, but please also听send me听your recommendations to add.
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鈥淓verything listed here I have tried out. All listed items are recommended by academics for use in their professional lives. Thanks to those who鈥檝e provided links and descriptions.鈥
The A to Z of social media for academics
Latest update: 10 March 2017
A IS FOR鈥
: If you don鈥檛 have a website, this is for you. It aggregates your social media content, giving you a stylish, one-page website.
:听Share your papers, track their impact, follow colleagues.
: Subscription-based tracker for your publications鈥 impact across different social media metrics.
:听Create a profile page, add your authored books, link to social media, upload videos.
:听A neat little tool used for real-time audience participation.
: Formerly听.听Analytic tool and social media management platform.
: Write, cite, collaborate, host data, and publish.听
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B IS FOR鈥
: High-powered project management platform.
:听Save, search and organise all your links from around the web. Group them into bundles. Share them with friends.
:听If you need more cloud storage before going pro elsewhere, here鈥檚 10gb more (250mb individual file limit).
:听A tool to help you manage your social media postings, it auto-schedules posts; you just need to remember to keep it topped up.
C IS FOR鈥
: Various graphic design tools, including mood board creation.
: Organise team conversations.
:听Collaborative mind-mapping tool.
: Part of Amazon, helping you self-publish all those books you鈥檝e written.
D IS FOR鈥
: A useful way to store and manage your work and related media. Finds connections between content where you perhaps wouldn鈥檛 find them.
:听Another Facebook, but with better values. Not strictly for HE, but good networking potential. Add me ! (via听)
: User-rated news delivery service, sharing what鈥檚 buzzing online.
:听Research and collaborative research tool and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site.
:听A听service that allows users to link their various social networking tools in order to reach a larger and disparate audience.
: A useful way of scheduling meetings or making group decisions.
:听For making sure the essentials are backed up, and sharing large files.
E IS FOR鈥
:听If you are bored with PowerPoint and scared of Prezi, then try emaze. It鈥檚 pretty snazzy.听
: The online bibliographic package for storing your reading lists.
: Socially friendly ticket management system for events.
:听Create archives of events.
:听If you like taking notes at conferences and want to share them, or just have them accessible across devices, this works.
:听iPad app to do screencast lectures, import multimedia and more.听
F IS FOR鈥
:听Social networking with colleagues and for teaching groups. The biggest social network in the world.
:听Allows researchers to publish all of their research outputs (presentations, figures, papers, data, etc) in seconds in an easily citable, sharable and discoverable manner.听
: Mobile app for video editing with a good range of functions.
: For curating and sharing image sets, finding resources and amazing royalty-free images.听
: The Frontiers Research Network is a science publishing platform with a social networking dimension.
G IS FOR鈥
:听Powerful collaboration, code review and code management for open source and private projects (recommended by).
:听Turbo boost your live presentations with this interactive social platform.
: For collaborative writing.
:听Google video chat app.
: Recently providing additional services, such as Google Authors and citation tracking for you or people you rate.听
: Create beautiful presentations with real-time Q&A board link from slide screen.
H IS FOR鈥
:听A whizzy online presentation app that cleverly embeds imagery from around the web, making it super speedy to make things pretty.听
: A听very nice app to bring together all of your social media accounts in one place.
:听Open source software platform for creating dynamic websites that support scientific research and educational activities.
: Online discussion tool allowing听sentence-level critique or note-taking on top of scientific articles and other academic publications.
I IS FOR鈥
: Global community of science, technology and medical researchers who come together to accelerate research, support career development and drive the distribution of discoveries.
: Action/racing game with a bit of strategy and science thrown into the mix in a rare and highly unusual micro world of a carefully recreated human cell.
: 鈥淚nMind allows the player to experience the journey into the patient鈥檚 brains in search of the neurons that cause mental disorder.鈥
: Explores the chemistry behind human emotion, inspired by Pixar's Inside Out.
Widely used picture-sharing and storytelling tool.
:听"If this, then that" is a service that allows users to connect various channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds, SMS, etc) and to create recipes. A recipe includes a 鈥渢rigger鈥 (if this) and an 鈥渁ction鈥 (then that). Go and have a play!
:听Who needs a bar chart, when you can present stats in a creative, social format?
:听Keep track of articles, websites and anything you don鈥檛 have time to read immediately but want to save for later.
:听To upload your pre-prints in a beautiful format for online viewing.听
:听A place to upload and share your media content.
J IS FOR鈥
:听Old school social media using email lists. Loads (and loads) of higher education groups.听
: Video chat.
:听A scientific literature search engine that empowers you to find relevant research based on location and biophysical attributes combined with traditional keyword searches.
K IS FOR鈥
:听Create, play and share games, make your own quiz or poll via @scottcolton2
:听Google鈥檚 notemaking app, very quick and easy to use. Use hashtags within a note to a group.
: A听really cool debating platform, bringing clarity to complex issues.
:听A visual history of your social media influence.
:听Designed to help you increase the impact of your published research articles by tracking the most effective networks for getting your work discussed and cited.
L IS FOR鈥
:听If you don鈥檛 have a website, and want an online CV, then your LinkedIn profile can substitute. Also home to lots of great discussion groups.听
:听A Post-it, or virtual pinboard, with bells on.
:听Create and watch live broadcasts.
M IS FOR鈥
: Popular blogging site.听
: Great way to create events and communities around them.
: Reference manager and academic social network that can help you organise your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.
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:听Mentimeter is an easy-to-use tool that makes facilitators and presenters look like stars. No installations or downloads required - and it's free!
: Curated news feeds around specific subjects.
: Open source course management system.
: Create an avatar from your photo and make it say and do anything (such as read a cyborg article from the future that you鈥檝e written? No? Just me then!)听
N IS FOR鈥
: Brings together news stories on a topic, ready for sharing.
:听The all-in-one workspace 鈥 for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. It even has an academic free licence.
O IS FOR鈥
: A real-time collaborative writing and publishing tool (via听).
P IS FOR鈥
:听Blank wall on to which you can write, embed and link images and video. Useful for brainstorming, mind mapping, and live collaborative collage.
:听3D painting app, from Oculus, works with Samsung Gear VR.
:听Create digital daily newspapers around specific keywords.听
:听Social website pinboard to keep track of things and share them.听
听(formerly Read it Later): Discover an interesting article, video or web page, save it to your Pocket feed and view it later.
:听Collaborative mapping tool.
:听Spice up your presentations with the zooming software, now with 3D.听
:听Open co-authoring space, useful in live settings, for multiple use, no log-in or registration needed. Just share URL.听
Q IS FOR鈥
:听Ask a question, find an answer. Subject and topic guides. One tool to initiate research development.
R IS FOR鈥
:听A great VR platform showing biomedical content.
: Fed up with going through multiple interfaces to discover and archive new articles? This powerful platform gives you a portal to everything, for article discovery, storage, and annotation. (via听).
:听Whiteboard for project planning.
:听A place to share articles/blog posts and a huge traffic driver.
:听Social networking site for academics.
S IS FOR鈥
:听Create a themed magazine.
:听Abstract and citation database of scientific literature.
:听Content cloud solutions.
:听Share your documents in a large social community.听
:听Lets you download whole websites for later analysis/processing.
:听Powerful project management and collaboration tool 鈥 cut down on email and get closer to inbox zero. (via听)
:听For videoconferencing on the fly.
:听Self-described 鈥渘ews for nerds鈥 platform. Science and tech related.
:听As it says, upload your documents/slides for public viewing.
:听Creative content without a footprint (deletes after a day) and another way to reach each other. Popular with students.
: For anyone wanting to share or find audio material, this is a neat solution.
:听Well known for listening to music, but you can also upload. Useful for music scholars: research, curate, share, publish.
:听Website building platform. A current favourite!听
:听Helps newsrooms discover and verify the best content on the social web. Good for media studies.
:听As it sounds, create surveys and share them.
T IS FOR鈥
: 鈥淚deas worth spreading鈥 start off local. Visit these events for great insights into the next thought leaders. Many are run by academics.
: Download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
:听Instagram on steroids, but with a bigger youth focus, lip-synch to sound tracks and share your insights.听
:听paint in 3D.听
:听Capture 15-second video updates and publish them in real time to your social networks.听
:听Popular blogging platform.
:听Twitter client for MacOS and iOS devices, lets you have multiple Twitter feeds (e.g. different hashtags) open at the same time. Useful for conferences.
:听The Twitter-owned space to monitor and tweet.
: A microblogging platform to end all others.听
:听Visualise tweets during a conference to create another layer of activity.
:听Register a hashtag and help people find your event/project, etc.
:听Write your journal manuscript in the cloud with autoformatting to your chosen journal.
U IS FOR鈥
:听I guess 鈥淎cademy for U鈥? Join, upload a course, slides, video lectures, and even charge for it. It may be a new marketplace for university short courses and the like.
:听If you don鈥檛 have technical assistance to film your event, Ustream does it for you with a few clicks.
V IS FOR鈥
:听If the short upload limit on YouTube doesn鈥檛 suit your needs, then upload to here.听
: Powerful infographic platform, free account with up to five projects.
W IS FOR鈥
:听This platform may mean that you don't need a website anymore. Pinterest on steroids.听
: Private messaging mobile app with encrption, owned by Facebook and be can be used on a browser too.
:听Follow and edit terms in your area of expertise.
:听Simple website creation platform.
:听Create word clouds from data to understand the influence and importance within text.
:听Popular website creation platform.
Y IS FOR鈥
:听Private social network for use within an organisation. Many universities now using this to collaborate securely across departments, geographies, content and business applications.
:听Still the most popular video upload and share destination.听
Z IS FOR鈥
:听Video conferencing for teaching
:听A bibliographic tool that also helps you share resources.
GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN (A LIST OF OLD FAVOURITES, NOW DEFUNCT OR REMOVED FROM THE A to Z)
Chapter Swap: A place where you can get peer review on your work before submission.听
Cinemagram:听For the ubercreative academic. Precursor to Twitter鈥檚 Vine and more creative. Make an animated GIF from photos (GIFs are back, by the way).
iAmScientist: Global community of science, technology and medical researchers who come together to accelerate research, support career development and drive the distribution of discoveries.
MyOpenArchive: International non-profit organisation that advocates open access for never-before-published research papers on the web and provides self-archiving.
Pheed:听Social media platform offering distinct features such as voice-notes, audio clips and live broadcasting.
Prismatic:听Create newsfeeds based on your interests.
Posterous:听 Microblogging platform, a different way to blog.
Screenr:听Ever needed to screencast a presentation? This works without any download and goes live immediately. Give lectures from a distance and publish.
Topsy: Social media insights tool.
Gowalla: Location-based social network launched in 2007 and closed in 2012.
Vizify:听For those who want to create a personal website, the content is drawn from all social media feeds. Looks great.听EXAMPLE.
Vizibee:听Mobile platform for journalists and publishers to capture, break and share short-form quality video with the audience.听
Vyclone:听App that lets you mix video taken from multiple, simultaneous recordings. Just all point and click and the app does the rest.
We Follow:听Can听be a good way to find out people in your field who are on social media. Search by subject. It ranks based on your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn data. Acquired by About.me.
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POSTSCRIPT:
Print headline: Why academics should make time for social media
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