Every scientist should use Twitter: Part 2 - How?
Who you should follow When developing your network, you should connect with “influencers”. Connecting with these key actors will help you increase the impact of your communication efforts. To start building your network, Nature’s blog recommends picking someone you know in person or a scientist whose work you admire and browsing their following list for people to add to yours. Then, you should have a look at who those people are following as well. How many followers you need Now that you follow a qualified network, you should, in turn, develop a qualified audience for the content that you share. The general rule in Twitter is that when you follow someone, they will follow you back, which enables newcomers to build their network from scratch. A study from Facets highlights that scientists with fewer than 1 000 followers are mostly tweeting to their own kind: an average of 60% of their followers are fellow scientists. But above that threshold of 1 000 followers, the follower type becomes more diverse and includes research and educational organizations, media, non-scientific members of the public as well as decision-makers (politicians, etc). The authors also say their findings support the view that building audiences on Twitter and reaching nonscientists requires persistence and effective strategies, such as posting images with tweets. Therefore, tweeting regularly has the potential to disseminate scientific information widely and should encourage scientists to invest in building a social media presence for scientific outreach. What content you should share You can start public conversation tweets by tagging another account in order to ask a question or comment on something they may have posted. Your tweet should generally link to a paper, an event, a book or dataset with a scholarly identifier. Keep your Twitter active. Try to engage with your community at least a few times a week. No need to prepare long blog-posts, a simple favorite or retweet will do the deed. Hashtags and mentions When sharing content, remember to use a hashtag relating to the theme of your content. Hashtags are great for cross-referencing content, as well as creating natural SEO. Also, with these hashtags, you can create specific lists where all your articles will be referenced. Remember to regularly monitor hashtags that are relevant to you to stay up to date. The Nature blog also suggests creating meaningful and beneficial connections when starting conversations with others. For example, you can 1. ask a question, 2. retweet someone’s question to your network to help them (and you) to get an answer, and 3. reply to someone’s question. Or 1. offer a tool/resource to the community, 2. reply to a tweet by offering advice or testimony, and 3. promote someone else’s work. 3 moments when you should take the time to tweet When you start your workday, take a few minutes in the morning before all your other tasks to scroll through your Twitter feed. Share and retweet content that can be of interest to you and your community, and engage in conversations with your fellow users; When you publish a scientific article or even a blog post, take a few minutes to share it on Twitter with a direct link. Be active on Twitter during events. Since you will have time to listen to conferences and chat with fellow scientists, why not take a little time to tweet as well? Using Twitter during events Events are an important part of any scientist, scholar or researcher’s professional life. That is why the way you approach events on Twitter should mirror the way you approach them in real life. You spend time exchanging with your peers after an interesting talk? Exchange the same way directly on Twitter and increase your online activity during events. Know that with Twitter, you can also follow live conferences that you are unable to attend, whilst still interacting, which is a great time-saver.