How can academics use social media?

It’s not just students grappling with how they can use social media to enhance and manage their studies.  Academics and researchers have a raft of social channels open to them to help both with their teaching and their own research and career.  But what is worth spending time on, and how can social media work in an academic context?

Following our last post, we’ve come across this handy blog giving advice on How to do a Literature Review.  Covering a host of topics, there are a couple of top tips posts on using social media in academia, sharing lots of useful links across a variety of social media topics to get you thinking:

• Institutions and social media
• Social media in general
• Digital identity
• Blogging
• Twitter
• Other social media platforms.

Highly recommended whether you want a quick round up on discussion about using social media in academia or you’re ready to jump in and set up your own blog or Twitter account and develop your online profile.

Our own tip for today?  Join the conversation! 

Find social media channels in your areas of interest, whether academic or not, so you can see what other people in your field are talking about, sharing, and looking at.  From there you’ll find ideas, tips and links to other social platforms to explore, and widen your digital horizons.

To get started, look for:

1. Institution, department and colleague Twitter feeds
2. Blogs written by key authors and thinkers in your field of study
3. Relevant publications, journals and news channels RSS feeds.

And don’t forget publisher networks – at SAGE we have a range of social media channels sharing content and knowledge across journals, books, authors and subjects, which are great places to expand your own network. Come and say hello:)