Developing a Professional Online Presence as an Academic

Sue Beckingham | @suebecks | Sheffield Hallam University

Consider

Think about the information you currently share externally

• What do you want people to see? • Who is your audience?• How do you get this information to them?

students

colleagues

the press

funding councils

subject specialism

acquaintances

businesses

helicopter parents

AudienceYOU

professional bodies

special interest groups

friends

family

alumni

Established conduits

Aristotle's Model of Communication

Speaker Speech Audience Effect

Occasion

The Message is the Medium Attention is Shifting

Email

• messages

Web

• documents

Social Media

• messages

Nova Spivack

Some findings…

Exploring the potential of weak ties

• strong ties have the same access to the same people and resources you do

• weak ties can act as a bridge to other parts of your organisation or others outside

(Hoffman and Casnocha 2012:06)

However building… weak ties can uniquely serve as bridges to other worlds and thus can pass on information or opportunities you have not heard about.

Knowledge from a network perspective is

about connecting experiences,

relationships, and situations.

Jarche 2013

Social Media can help to amplify your

online presence

AND to continue this dialogue face to face

CREATORS

CURATORS

CRITICS

CONVERSATIONALISTS

COLLABORATORS

COMMUNICATORS

Social Media EMPOWERS individuals to become digital:

SHURASheffield Hallam University Research Archive

http://shura.shu.ac.uk/

JORUM

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

Jorum is a Jisc funded Service for UK FE and HE, to collect and share Open Educational Resources (OER), allowing their reuse and repurposing. 

Academia.edu

Slideshare

http://www.slideshare.net/suebeckingham

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a network dedicated to science and research. Connect, collaborate and discover scientific publications, jobs and conferences. All for free. 'Make your research visible'.

http://www.researchgate.net/

LinkedIn

LinkedIn members did over 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches on the platform in 2012 alone.

There were 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches undertaken by LinkedIn members on the platform in 2012 alone

The value of

http://www.powerformula.net/linkedin-infographic-portrait-of-a-linkedin-user-2014/

Created with http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

“People need to learn how to connect to new people on a regular basis. No person has all the knowledge needed to work completely alone in our connected society. Neither does any company. Neither does any government.

We are all connected AND dependent on each other.”

Harold Jarche

Connectedness

Begin by paying forward

• Sharing articles and videos relevant to your audience

• Commenting on blogs• Engaging with tweets• Answering questions in LinkedIn groups

Care needs to be taken

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global!

will find you!

Be mindful of how people search for information and mange what

they will find.

Social Media ranks highlySearch your own name to see what others see

People searches every day

Concerns

Spring Clean your Profiles

• Google yourself and identify what others see

• Where applicable complete sections, bios, add a profile photos

• Consider LinkedIn as your professional landing page

• Add links to your website or blog• Create a customised url and add to email

signatures and business cards

Use your online presence to

• develop relationships

• develop visibility• develop credibility

LinkedIn updates

Blog comments

Blogposts

Tweets

Slideshare

YouTube& Vimeo

Newer digital communication conduits include

'The central premise of social

capital is that social networks have

value.'

Putman 2000

Building Social Capital

Impact

Anklam 2007

Digital Bibliometrics

Using social media to measure scholarly impact

Using the Activity Stream to uncover off-site engagement

Increasingly people engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks.

Over 80% of interactions with content take place on sites other than the content owner’s website.

So, it is likely that most people become aware of and interact with your blog posts, videos, and articles on

websites other than your own.

Mention

Create alerts on your name, your brand, your industry and your competitors and be informed of any mention on the web and social networks

https://en.mention.com/

Developing a Professional Online Presence as an Academic

Technology continues to revolutionise the communication landscape.  Connectivity and collaboration have become the keywords to business success, with social media allowing you to help develop your digital identity.

During this workshop we will review some of the key social media and technology tools that affect how you are viewed online, and provide tips on how to create and manage a professional online presence.

Sue Beckingham | @suebecks