Social media for academics and professionals

So that we’re on the same page, we’d like you to consider the following before coming to the workshop:

1. What audience do you want to communicate with on social media?

2. Have you seen an account that you aspire to? Try to think about why – is it the tone that they use, the use of images, the way they present information?

3. Capacity – are you in a position to take on this account by yourself, or is there a group of people with similar interests that could share an account?

4. Consult our cheat sheet.

You don’t need to know all of the answers to these questions, but it’s beneficial to start thinking about it. We’ll go over it all again during the workshop.

Twitter
· Familiarise yourself with Bitly– a site used to shrink your links to make them neater. It also tracks who’s opened your link.

· Look at TweetDeck. This system helps sort your news feed! You can even set up a column that monitors a certain hashtag.
Some columns we like to use:
- Scheduled
- Notifications
- User
- Home
- Messages

Facebook
· Just as mentioned above for Twitter, Bitly can be used to shrink your links in Facebook (but generally you'll want to remove all visible links from your post).

· Beautiful graphics work incredibly well on Facebook, whether they are in a post or a new cover photo. If you’re not familiar with Adobe design products, Canva is a simpler web-based option.

Instagram
· Instagram has recently introduced Business Accounts - if you haven't already adopted this into your own account, it's a great way to get some insights into your followers.

· Repost is a great app that helps you share relevant content from other Instagram accounts.

· Quotes can work well depending on your audience. They can be a great way to spread your message or showcase the achievements of someone in your field or team. InstaQuote is a useful tool for this, otherwise you can use Canva online and then send it to your phone to upload.

· Crowdfire helps you track statistics, schedule posts, keep tabs on followers and find new ones too. However, the premium product (which is significantly more useful) is $19.95 per month.

All
· Hootsuite and Buffer are social media management platforms. Buffer is simpler than Hootsuite, but still a useful scheduling tool.

· Think about visual ways of showing your content. For example gifs and short, simple informative videos work particularly well on Facebook and Twitter at the moment. For videos, WeVideo is a free, easy to use video editing software that integrates with Google Drive. For gifs, you can try Giphy or Makeagif.

· When you find great content – share it! Doingthis helps other users, as well as exposes them to your account. We recommend DrumUp, a toolthat identifies engaging stories that are perfect for your audience and queuesthem for posting.

· Short, sharp and engaging headlines are the trick to connecting with your audience. Tools like Headline Analyzer help you improve your headlines by giving you a score as well as recommended examples and tips.