Using Twitter to enhance your research impact

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Esther De Smet - Let's Talk Science
workshop - 1 July 2015

Quick outline of the workshop. Somewhere in there we’ll have a break!
The aim of this workshop is not getting everyone on Twitter. What I want to do is
provide you with the necessary information on context and on using Twitter so you can
decide whether to join the blue bird community. If you’re not convinced you will not be
able to keep it up.
workshop - 1 July 2015 2

Let’s start with context.
There seems to be a new punch line in academia: Publish or Perish has become Be
Visible or Vanish.
From funding to citations to digital footprint and media exposure: research seems to be
about getting noticed and making an impact. And this is more than having a high H-
index – which is an indicator for scholarly impact based on publications and citations.
But science is of course so much more than this. It pays to consider who are the real
stakeholders of science and how this affects the way you work. Something we call
‘societal value creation of research’.
So the question is: do you work with your door close or open?
If you are serious about being a researcher in today’s context of science for society,
online academic tools and high impact and visibility, it might be interesting to pay
attention to this talk and get a few pointers on how to approach this in a strategic way.
A good way to help you along in this environment of high visibility is investing in
networking – offline and online.

Goodier and Czerniewicz adapted the functional building blocks of social media (‘Social
media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media’ by Jan
H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens , Ian P. McCarthy , Bruno S. Silvestre in Business
Horizons, Volume 54, Issue 3, May–June 2011, Pages 241–251) and applied them to
what is called ‘the networked scholar’.
Central to your attitude as a networked scholar is your identity, and in this case we focus
on your online identity - defined as ‘the extent to which others can identify you online as
a scholar’. This is why it is critical to become aware of your online presence and to shape
and maintain this presence.”
And this makes sense when you consider that 7 out of 10 people use online search tools
when they look for information on other people.

There are two broad categories of online content to consider when talking about your
online presence
- digital footprint is your active contribution to and interaction with the online world
- digital shadow is content about you posted and uploaded by others, as well as
automatically generated and collated content
You should try and maximise the former and watch the latter, especially as it is difficult
to control. The best way to drown out content about yourself that you may not like is to
upload content of your choice.
The authors discern 4 steps in this exercise of assessing and improving your online
presence.

One – look at your current digital footprint. Yes people, this means googling yourself
once in a while.
It is also useful to do specific Google searches. You could start with Google Images,
Google Videos, Google Books and Google Discussions. You might even set up some
Google Alerts.
And don’t worry, you’re not the only one doing this.
Let these questions help you along.

If you already do regular searches for your own name, your results in Google will be
influenced by your previous searches and those of other people, so also do searches for
your name in search engines which don’t have this personalisation
feature, such as Duckduckgo.
Checking up on your scholarly online profile today is all about online tools with
publication and citation databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.
Because of a recent surge in online tools we can now also track the broader impact of
scholarly activities: Mendeley (bookmarks of your articles based on URL or DOI),
Altmetric (media buzz around your research), Impactstory (linking outputs) and even
socialmention.
Another interesting thing is OrcID – which provides a persistent digital identifier that
distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research
workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages
between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.
Ghent University will be implementing this later this year via Biblio.

Two: decide on what you want.
As we’ve already learnt, there are many social networks around which cater to
researchers and are truly in use. See recent study by Nature.
If there’s one clear rule, it’s that having an online presence is a time commitment. Think
about how much time you can commit to keeping your profile(s) current and then
decide if you should have just one profile with links from other services, or whether you
should replicate your profile on a number of services. In any case, online profiles that
are not maintained or updated do not create a good impression.

Let these questions guide you along.
Big tip: make sure you use the platforms that your university has on offer. Number 1:
keep your academic repository up to date and use this as your starting point.
But don’t forget that there’s a world outside academia: it might pay off to create a
LinkedIn profile in which you link to your repository. And this is also where Twitter
comes in because it balances between academic/professional and personal/outreach.

3 is all about ‘Improving your outputs’ availability’
This is about making your scholarly outputs reach as many people as possible and
making it easily accessible and findable.
“While you may publish prolifically, if people can’t discover your content online, they are
much less likely to read it.”
This step involves assessing what publications and other outputs of yours are already
online and then sharing everything else you are able to, including teaching resources
and ‘popular or informal’ resources in a variety of formats.
This is where the notion of Open Access and Open Science comes in.
Science Europe identified three essential aspects of Open science: its relation to digital
technology, the idea that ir explores changing research practices and their impact on the
research system as a whole, and the fundamental importance of “a certain vision of
science as a community of practice”.

Once you got the basics, it is time to start communicating and interacting. And I cannot
stress enough that both aspects are equally important. Just broadcasting is not enough
(adopt the same attitude as in research: more than publications, also projects and
collaborations).
Or as Goodier and Czerniewicz say: “While having an online profile on a platform is a
first step, in order to fully interact with others online, you need to engage with them.“
Communication and interaction is also key to creating an impact. There are many types
of societal value creation of research – a whole smorgasbord to unleash your creativity,
fit for your kind of research - but that’s another workshop.
In this session we must focus on social media and esp. Twitter.
With social media you are in effect using media that thrive on interaction. If you just
broadcast what a great researcher you are you will not be able to reap the full benefits
of what these media have to offer.

And that brings us to step 2: understand the principles of good communication – so you
can apply these to Twitter too.

How I see it, to take you to the next level you need to look for productive interactions.
Choose tools that fit your character, your talents and your research.
Re-use all this scientific and non-scientific knowledge that you’re amassing but be sure
to adapt it to fit your specific aim and tailor it to your audience.
PRODUCTIVE INTERACTIONS means looking for partners within your university.
- Communication Office
- Unit for Science Communication
- Research Communication (incl. scholarly communication)
- Faculty Communication
- Dedicated person with research group
It also means identifying external stakeholders:
- Of your research: general public and specific target groups
- Of your communication: media
When it comes to social media: FIND YOUR INFLUENCERS (people that can act as your
megaphone)

Before I turn to the wide array of tools at your disposal I would like to turn your
attention to a useful competence in your bag of communication tricks.
STORY-BOARDING – why not try story-boarding your research project?
• It helps envision, or picture in miniature, and long in advance, a finished product.
• Storyboarding is a kind of low-cost prototyping, a way of making more concrete
what will happen.
• Because concepts are fleshed out and made concrete in an accessible way, a
storyboard can help generate resources and commitment from external source.
• The storyboard (and later the screenplay) generate a detailed, common vision that
can be shared early on by many different actors in complex production teams.
Link: https://medium.com/advice-and-help-in-authoring-a-phd-or-non-fiction/story-
boarding-research-b430cebd5ccd
STORY-TELLING – that in turn will help when you try your hand at story-telling.
The risks that come with communicating your research to wide audiences are great.
Rigorous researching and attention-grabbing storytelling are very different trades.
However, by finding that point of connection in your research and by maintaining control
of your media relationships, you will be better placed at mitigating those risks.
Link: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/27/academic-storytelling-
risk-reduction/

TOOLS
And let’s stress again: RE-USE CONTENT BUT ADAPT TO AIM AND TARGET AUDIENCE
Many more but these are relevant to science
- Website: profile page but more importantly, news items
- LinkedIn: profile outside academia
- Visual platforms: Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest
- In between visual and blog: Tumblr (E.g. Congrats – you’ve got an all male panel! And
Academic Bird Watching http://errantscience.tumblr.com/post/116460277480/birds-
of-academia-an-often-hard-to-spot-selection)
- Commenting
- Reddit Science
- Ik heb een vraag
- Opinion pieces for all kinds of media
- Wikipedia as a means to open up science:
https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/10/using-wikipedia-to-open-up-science/
- Data visualisation
- Infographics: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/08/11/the-power-of-
pictures-how-we-can-use-images-to-promote-and-communicate-science/ > the
importance of visuals (academic poster becomes infographic)
- Twitter
- Online book reviews including popular books based on science:
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http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/category/disciplines/media-studies/
- Blog: separate, group, guest
- Explanimation: e.g. Crash Course Biology
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3EED4C1D684D3ADF > Choose your
audience / Deliver in style / Stay focused / Get to the point / Be part of the community
/ Give the audience an anchor / Be a person not a company
- Ted talk (start locally with TedX) – Scientists Popularizing Science: characteristics and
impact of TED Talk Presenters (PLOSONE April 2013): “Presenters are predominantly
male and non-academics. Although TED popularizes research it may not promote the
work of scientists within the academic community.”
- Podcast

Part of this workshop is also allowing full disclosure.
Is social media a waste of time?
Is it dangerous? Will it hurt your career?
And I’ll be honest: social media are not the easy way out.
Box 1
Box 2
Box 3
Certainly a matter of ‘look before you leap’.

Timing and complementarity are everything in social media but what about the actual
impact – scientific and otherwise?
For those looking at hard evidence let’s look at the science about science.
1. April 2012: article by Melissa Terras showing increase in downloads after tweets
2. Reminiscent of article by Eysenbach 2011
3. What about blogs?
4. Which led to age-old discussion ‘association is not correlation, which in turn is not
causation’
Tweets tend to associate with citations but not correlate > but the more people start
tweeting their research the bigger the correlation will get?
In any event, interest was sparked and more people were talking about ‘altmetrics’ as
the new saviour of science.

ALTMETRICS > An umbrella term for spectrum of social media-based metrics:
- often proposed as alternative to citation-based indicators
- And as a tool to measure the impact of science outside academia
But… “most studies show that, although citations and the new metrics are to some
extent positively correlated, these correlations are very weak.” Quote from a recent and
very interesting article by scientometricians concluding that at the most, social media
metrics may function as complements to other types of indicators and metrics.
Some more findings from this same article: (see looking glass and circle)

Also, questions are raised about a certain bias. A bias in topics: do social media only pay
attention to the sex, drugs and rock and roll of science? A bias in broadcasters: social
sciences and humanities are the most often found on social media platforms.
Or is a matter of shouting the loudest?
“Just like a taller, more powerful radio tower will boost a signal so it can be heard at a
greater distance; it makes sense that more people will read a paper if the writer is active
on social media. Of course, because we wrote it, we think it’s great that our paper has
proved so popular, but we have to ask: in the future, will the highest quality papers be
read most? Or will it be only those papers backed up by the loudest voices?” - Academic
blogging is part of a complex online academic attention economy, leading to
unprecedented readership, I. Mewburn and P. Thomson for LSE Impact blog (Dec 2013)
Let’s wrap this discussion up with the four words scientists love to hear: more research
is needed!
In the meantime things are evolving… (see tweet)
So let us ask that question again: why should we be interested in social media as a tool
for research?

Besides the obvious benefits:
- Connect with peers and building a scholarly network. Quote: “It’s allowed me to open
up new communities for discussions and increase the interdisciplinarity of my
research.” (A network boost by M. Baker. Nature, 12 Feb 2015)
- Reputation management
- Dissemination
Conferences:
- Back-channel: (capture content & provide feedback) share questions and resources
- Connecting and networking
- Virtual participation
- Reading tip: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-
network/blog/2012/oct/03/ethics-live-tweeting-academic-conferences
Jobs & prof. development:
- “Following institutions, companies and individuals on Twitter can offer clues about
workplace culture and ongoing projects in a way that static website do not.”
- “Junior researchers are creating identities that don’t have to be routed through the
principal investigator.” (A network boost by M. Baker. Nature, 12 Feb 2015)

There’re great benefits to integrating social media into your research – not just as a way
to communicate but also as a means to become
a better scholar.
Although it can be great fun and many of the social media look flighty (eg. half-life of a
tweet is 18 minutes) it should not be taken lightly
but approached in a strategic and professional manner.
It’s all about finding the right balance:
- Not overthinking it but using it to your advantage
- Getting into the spirit of sharing while keeping focus in your own research and not
losing yourself in procrastination
- Giving it a natural place in your time management and approaching it so you feel
comfortable with it
It might even offer you some release to the incessant publication and promotion
pressure (although the current academic system
is not yet in tune with outreach and online activities)
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Twitter can be a lot of fun and be an added value if you find the right use for you and
your aims
But those might not be the aims of your target audience
It also adds to information ‘overload’
It does need to be approached with a healthy wariness and self-control
“It’s many different things to many different people.”
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Building blocks of Twitter
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But first: what technology?
• Twitter clients: Twitter, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Tweetbot > app or web-based
• Schedulers: Hootsuite, Buffer
• Feed updates
• Link shorteners and trackers: Bitly, Owly
• Analytics: Twitter Analytics, Twitalyzer, SumAll, twtrland > some examples later on
• Filters
• Archive: twDocs lets you save Twitter tweets, favorites, mentions, direct messages
and search results as PDF, DOC, XML, CSV, TXT, XLS or HTML files.
• History: Topsy (get old tweets)
• Storify
• BlueNod
• TwInbox: integrated into MS Outlook
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Account:
- Accounts can be closed down due to inactivity. Inactivity is based on a combination of
tweeting, logging in, and the date an account was created. In order to keep an account
active, a user needs to log in at least once every six months, or risk permanently losing
an account.
- An account might appear dead, but someone might be an active reader of other’s
tweets.
- What’s the underlying e-mail address? (think notifications)
User name (handle):
User name is not the same as your name: Your username appears in your profile URL
and is unique to you. Your name is a personal identifier (sometimes a business name or
real name) displayed in your profile page.
Use a short Twitter username. Limit to 15 characters
cannot contain "admin" or "Twitter“
avoid numbers or underline
You want others to be able to remember it and type it easily.
You can be anonymous if you wish, but as a researcher it is not recommended: you are
more likely to have interesting interactions with others if they know who you are.

Closed account: same thing (defeats the purpose of Twitter)
Advertise your account: e-mail signature, conference name tag, other communication
media (e.g. twitter wall on website or conference)
Changing your username will not affect your existing followers, direct messages, or
@replies. Your followers will simply see a new username next to your profile photo when
you update. Alert your followers before you change your username so they can direct
@replies or direct messages to your new username.
Pin a tweet?
Decision: sharing the effort through a group account or getting for feet wet with guest
tweeting (cf. Realscientists, WetheHums)

Twitter accounts for individual researchers
Let’s improve them together

Twitter accounts for research groups

Settings
- Keeping it manageable and learning from activity
- Privacy
- Notifications (e-mail address)
- Twitter Archive

Now it’s time for the real work:
- Building up your network by following and being followed
- Start tweeting
In both cases: focus on quality rather than quantity
(flowchart can help but don’t approach this outlet like all other things in
academia and turn it into a reputation economy)
And yes, you’ll make mistakes but there are always ways to deal with these! It is
important to keep learning and not become complacent.
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Importance of a good bio
Odd followers and bots: it happens
@tweetyourscience database
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/02/academic-tweeters-
your-suggestions-in-full/
With time, you'll become adept at discerning who is worth following and who is
not. There's no set strategy for this — it's completely up to you and your own
personal tastes. It might also depend on your strategy.
Twitter etiquette does not require that you follow someone just because they
follow you, but following someone is a way of indicating your presence to them.
You could also use mentions in the same way.
LISTS
A list is a curated group of Twitter users. You can create your own lists or
subscribe to lists created by others. Viewing a list timeline will show you a stream
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of Tweets from only the users on that list.
Lists are used for reading Tweets only. You cannot send or direct a Tweet to
members of a list, for only those list members to see.
You can follow Twitter profiles using lists without actually following their accounts,
which means these users aren’t notified that you’re following them.
Idea: If you’re going to an event or attended one in the past — add the people
associated with the event to a Twitter List.

Language of your tweets
Individual tweets are being displayed with larger font and a new font face, while your
thumbnail image, name and Twitter handle are actually smaller, bringing the focus on
the content of the tweet.
And your tweets that are getting particularly high engagement (more favorites,
retweets, etc.) will actually be displayed with even larger font to bring further attention
to them.
Thin and thick tweets (David Silver): one layer of information > more layers
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Visual works!
By the way, a picture takes up valuable space in a timeline, esp. on a smartphone.
Some of @ResearchUGent’s most succesful tweets had visuals.
Knowing how many times to tweet per day is a process of trial and error, but that
doesn’t mean it’s a matter of blind luck to find that magical number. It’s an ongoing
process of refinement.
Important: management of expectations
More on timing later on.

Disclaimer: often depends on twitter client
REPLY AND MENTION
- Visiting another user's profile page on Twitter will not display Tweets that
mention them. However, you can search for all Tweets mentioning their
username in the search box. Search for "@username" to view results.
- People will only see others' @replies in their home timeline if they are following
both the sender and recipient of the @reply.
- People will see any mentions posted by someone they follow (all mentions are
treated like regular Tweets).
- People with protected Tweets can only send @replies to their approved
followers.
If someone sends you an @reply and you are not following the user, the reply will
not appear on your Tweets timeline. Instead, the reply will appear in your
Mentions tab. You can click People you follow at the top of the Mentions timeline
to only display mentions from users you are following.
It's a good idea to be judicious in your use of the Twitter @ reply button. If you're
trying to have a direct conversation with someone, be sure your tweets are
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interesting before you start sending a barrage of Twitter replies. (of course, no DM
is possible to multiple contacts)
TWITTER CANOE
If you’ve been @-mentioned in a conversation on Twitter that mentions a lot of
other users and that doesn't stop until the people involved run out of things to
say, congratulations! You’ve been roped into a Twitter canoe.
A canoe is a conversation on Twitter that keeps rolling and adding new people
until people get annoyed or bored and stop talking to each other. Adding yourself
to a Twitter canoe is a bit of a bold move—etiquette calls for someone to add you
first.
SUBTWEETING and TWEETSTORMS > CODE of CONDUCT
DIRECT MESSAGE
Direct Messages are private messages sent from one Twitter user to other Twitter
users. You can use Direct Messages to communicate privately with a single person
or with a group of people.
• You can start a conversation with anyone who follows you.
• Some accounts, including businesses, have enabled a setting to receive Direct
Messages from anyone. You can send a Direct Message to these users even if
they don’t follow you.
• There is an account limit of 1,000 Direct Messages sent per day.
Blue Line versus View Conversation
On Twitter web as well as its Android and iOS apps the tweets that form part of a
conversation are displayed connected by a blue line. This makes conversations
much easier to follow right from the timeline itself without having to go to a
tweet's permanent URL.
This means that if you have something to say that cannot be contained within the
confines of a single tweet, split them up into logical sentences, post the first
sentence(s) and then reply to that tweet using the reply button, remove the
@mention and then put in the second sentence(s), follow the same procedure for
subsequent tweets.
Also, if a conversation started an hour ago, but the latest tweet was sent 38
seconds ago, the whole conversation is going to appear at the top of your
timeline.
Blue line: if you follow people involved in conversation
View conversation: if retweeted (so people you don’t follow)

Blue Line versus View Conversation
On Twitter web as well as its Android and iOS apps the tweets that form part of a
conversation are displayed connected by a blue line. This makes conversations much
easier to follow right from the timeline itself without having to go to a tweet's
permanent URL.
This means that if you have something to say that cannot be contained within the
confines of a single tweet, split them up into logical sentences, post the first sentence(s)
and then reply to that tweet using the reply button, remove the @mention and then put
in the second sentence(s), follow the same procedure for subsequent tweets.
Also, if a conversation started an hour ago, but the latest tweet was sent 38 seconds
ago, the whole conversation is going to appear at the top of your timeline.
Blue line: if you follow people involved in conversation
View conversation: if retweeted (so people you don’t follow)
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Favourite
Correcting mistakes:
- Second tweet
- Never mind (life span)
- Replying: thin blue line and #correction
- Deleting a tweet: Please note that you can only delete Tweets that you have made,
you cannot delete other users' Tweets from your timeline. Deleted Tweets sometimes
hang out in Twitter search, they will clear with time.
Timing is everything (reason why I rarely use scheduled tweets)
And some people just cannot be helped…
Don’t mix up accounts (easily done in Hootsuite) and don’t use shortcuts (eg ‘d’ for
direct message)
Try to come up with a witty approach to making mistakes but don’t make it worse!

Get to know the habits of your followers and influencers!
It might pay off to have a schedule and a list of possible tweets.
HALF LIFE: http://www.socialmediacontractors.com/half-life-tweet/
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1. Your followers are reacting: you should be able to see a reaction ripple
through your feed.
2. Your number of followers is steadily and naturally growing. If your follower
numbers are falling, tweet less; if they’re static, tweet more.
3. The right people are seeing and responding to your tweets. Connect with the
influencers.
4. You treat Twitter interactions differently than promotions. If you are using
your Twitter account strictly as a promotional channel, people will treat it as
such.
5. Your posts yield real results.
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Some examples analysed

Brings us back to the start
All about knowing yourself
Finding the right balance
So have fun but keep it real!
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Using Twitter to enhance your research impact

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