BU Research Blog

Researchers, Mark Reed and Anna Evely from one of the LWEC accredited Rural Economy and Land Use projects have produced a clear  “top tips” guide to twitter for academic staff.  Although based on their own experiences on the Sustainable Learning and Uplands Project and intended to help other academics to disseminate their work, the “Twitter Tips” guide could be used by anyone.

A Twitter account set up for specific research projects can be an excellent way to disseminate your research findings further afield than just the academic community, however using twitter well is a skill that needs to be developed.  This is a really simple 12 page guide to using Twitter in an effective way. 

Some suggestions from the guide:

• Every time you do a conference/workshop/seminar presentation, put your slides online (e.g. using SlideShare) and tweet them.
• Contact relevant people with large followings to ask if they can re-tweet key messages you’ve sent – tweet or Direct Message them via Twitter.
• Ensure the majority of your tweets have hyperlinks to further information
• If someone gave you the information credit him or her with it, either by using @person1 (if they are a twitter user) or as a quote in text.
• Get to know when your followers are most likely to read your tweets – most academics who use Twitter for work purposes only tweet 8-5 pm Monday-Friday.