If you measure success in social media as having hundreds or thousands of followers on multiple platforms, this article is not for you. If, on the other hand, you measure success as resisting the pull of the black hole of social media while still engaging with it and finding good people, good information, and good ideas out there, let’s talk.
Social media is a wonderful tool for pluralizing access to information. It can also easily become an overwhelming wall of white noise and information that will consume all of your waking hours. I only participate in one major channel professionally: Twitter. I find that managing multiple social media profiles is time-consuming and that most interactions across multiple platforms will be recurring interactions, so there is little added value to multiple presences.
I also prefer, for my discipline and my way of working, Twitter as a (relatively) text-based platform and one that operates on the basis of shorter, direct messages (at least on paper) that allow me to more easily clear all available information.
But, of course, all social media can easily put their users at risk if we are not careful. When I was thinking about joining Twitter, I got some helpful advice, and I’ve been getting some of my own ever since. So here I bring you the 10 commandments of academic Twitter:
- Keep your personal and professional personas separate to the extent it’s practical to do so (I’ve never created a personal Twitter account as a result).
- You’ll create a handle that identifies how you want to be known on Twitter (in academia, your major area of intervention, or even your specific intervention—which can absolutely change over time, and can also be addressed ) and not just you. as a person.
- You won’t be tempted to follow general news sites because they will overwhelm you with information (instead go after journalists who make specific rounds that appeal to your professional interests).
- Honor your hashtags, because they connect you to communities (and sometimes bots, unfortunately) who are tangentially interested in the things you discuss (an especially good way to tap into area studies).
- Share your original content, rather than retweets, because it’s much more likely to generate engagement.
I have kept these commandments and added five more of my own:
- You don’t need to tweet every day (after all, there are many other parts of the job that often take priority).
- You’ll be live-tweeting conference panels (it’s always a great way to engage with people you might not necessarily get a chance to chat with, especially at large conferences, not to mention getting the ideas out there in the world as the academic version of “breaking news”).
- You should never copy and paste a link and call it original content (instead of just pasting a link into your new paper or book, add a tweet or short topic about the main lesson and why it matters to your field/intervention; when pressed for time, I sometimes just attach a thread that attaches the abstract).
- You don’t have to just tweet a news story (add a sentence about your reaction to it, or a quote from the story that really caught your attention – it’s a quick way to make the content more original, as mentioned above ).
- Remember to do the hard work of being an academic before you go online to keep academic Twitter sacred.
The seventh and eighth commandments are very helpful in starting conversations and getting new followers. Sixth gets in the way of “building my audience” but I do it anyway. And the reason I adhere to this commandment is because, from where I stand, having a large Twitter following and being popular is a small bonus to the job, but it’s not part of my primary (or secondary) duties ). It is a path to influence, yes; but it’s also one that happens mostly in an echo chamber. Rarely for me do Twitter chats turn into tools to engage with the wider community (talking directly to a reporter via email – so old-fashioned! – works best, in my experience).
Thus, my engagement with Twitter fades. Followed by frenzied bouts of tweeting about conferences, or important world events that my research directly speaks to, I can sometimes spend weeks just checking the platform to see what other people are up to (lots of great stuff from people I follow – thanks) and retweeting their content (preferably with a comment of mine adding to the conversation, re: the fifth commandment) or creating tweets about the news I read, per the ninth commandment.
This process of short commitment allows me to balance my life better and avoid the drift of doom. I treat Twitter as a work-related hobby, not my actual job. Of course, if I have half an hour between meetings, or I’ve finished a big task earlier in the day and I don’t have the mental energy to start anything new in the two hours I have left, I’ll jump on Twitter, learn about exciting new jobs in my area and share my opinion.
However, and speaking of the 10th commandment, I am also very aware that, in order to be able to contribute original content as an academic, I need to do the hard work of learning so that I have something informed. to say. Punditism is easy and engaging, and it can get you new followers and start exciting conversations (in the way a roller coaster or a haunted house is exciting), but, like candy, there’s a crash after the rush. It’s the broccoli of real research that will really support you on social media.
Lucas Lixinski is Professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney. You can become one of his 1,400+ Twitter followers by checking him out at @IntHeritageLaw.
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