Marketing and Communications

Benefits of Social Media

The use of social media channels has grown exponentially in a relatively short time and we know that many of our audiences are using social media as part of their everyday lives.  Effective use of social media offers us many opportunities to:

Engage with our audiences
Be responsive to enquiries
Enhance our reputation
Influence opinion-formers

Academics and Researchers can use social media to:

Build academic networks
Engage with established discipline or professional body related groups
Extend their reach in communicating their research
Collaborate with colleagues

A good guide for researchers can be found at www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers and all academic colleagues are encouraged to work with our Press and PR team who can help you to promote your blogs and advise you on media coverage.

Best practice tips

Be part of a conversation.

Talk to your audience like you would talk to real people in professional situations.
Be friendly and use your own voice, avoid contrived language.
Consider content that’s open-ended and invites responses and encourages comments.
On blogs, you may also broaden the conversation by mentioning others who are blogging about the same topic and allowing your content to be shared.

In the event of a negative user comment on a University social media channel, the channel administrator should endeavour to post a reasoned response to the comment/query, provided the comment is not patently obscene, libellous or irrelevant (in this case the comment can be removed).