10 tips for promoting your research online

How do you make sure the
right people are seeing your research? Is it being read as much as you’d
like? In this guest blog, Joshua Clark, Marketing Executive at
Altmetric shares some useful tips.
Joshua Clark


Promoting your research online is vital if you need to
provide evidence of the reach and potential broader influence of your
work, particularly when applying for promotion or tenure and funding.
Here are some top tips to help you get started:


1. Put together a strategy


Begin by thinking about which researchers and other audiences will be
interested in your research, the disciplines they work in, and where
they can be found. Are they within your institution, or somewhere
further afield?


Next, think about the channels that would be most suitable for to
promoting your work to your intended audience. It can be a good idea to
start by looking at the channels that other researchers publishing in
your field have used to get their work noticed. One way to do this is to
use the Altmetric Bookmarklet.



2. Write a summary


You might want to consider writing a plain English summary of your
work, focused on making it more accessible to a wider audience. This
will provide a good lead into your research and encourage more people to
read your article.


You could then post the summary to online discussion groups and
forums that you think might find it relevant. Or, if you’d rather go
that extra mile, why not put together a short video summarising your
work and sharing it via websites such as Wesharescience.com.


3. Make your data available


Publishing an article doesn’t tell the full story of your research.
You can make images, files and other outputs associated with it
available through a digital repository such as Figshare.
When you upload your research to a repository they will give it a
unique identifier. This makes citing your research easier, as well as
tracking online attention with services such as Altmetric.



4. Post on social media


Post links to your work via any social media accounts you have. You
could also focus your promotion around any significant events that are
happening, such as conferences that may be interested in your research
topic, by using the event’s hashtag.


As well as using your own social profiles you may find you get more engagement from using your department’s accounts.


5. Start a blog


Think about starting your own blog and posting about your work. It doesn’t need to be a huge task and creating a simple schedule can help you post regularly.


You could also look into contacting some established bloggers that
are writing about your subject area (easily identifiable via the Altmetric details pages
for other publications in your field), or anyone who has a big
following on Twitter that may be interested in sharing your work.


6. Link out from your email signature and profiles


It might seem obvious, but adding a link to your work to your email
signature is a must! By doing this you are ensuring that your contacts
are kept up to date with your latest research.


7. Use your Research Office


If you feel your work could benefit from an extra promotional push
why not get in touch with your Research Office, as they may be able to
help make your work more visible.


They might have access to channels such as email lists or have
contacts that could be used to get your research noticed by news outlets
or government agencies. Having your research mentioned on higher
profile websites will increase your readership and look great on future
applications. Also consider providing your research office with some key
points of why your work matters and what the key outcomes were, as this
can help them build a pitch for a broader audience.


8. Register for an ORCID ID


Register for an ORCID ID so that you
have a unique identifier which will tie you to your work and distinguish
you from other researchers. It’s easy, free and will come in useful for
any manuscript or grant submissions.



9. Make your research open


Having your work freely available to read may mean that your research
reaches a wider audience and see a higher level of citations. If you
would like to publish your research in this way visit your Research
Office who will be able to advise on the best course of action.


10. Unique Identifiers


Make sure that whenever you mention your research online you use or
link to a page that includes your work’s unique identifier, this can be a
DOI, arXiv ID or PubMed ID. This is vital to ensure that your work is
tracked by us at Altmetric so that you can keep on top of the
conversations surrounding your research. It will also mean that your
work becomes easily discoverable and so is more likely to be read and
cited by other academics.


Track the results of your efforts!


Find out the impact of your promotional efforts by using stats provided on publisher websites, such as Altmetric badges, and by using tools like the Altmetric Bookmarklet.


If you’d like to read the original version of this post why not visit the Altmetric blog here.