Faculty Research Promotion
We elevate the national profiles of our faculty by sharing their expertise with the public.
One of the greatest assets of any institution is faculty expertise and research, an invaluable commodity when it comes to drawing attention to a university. We elevate our faculty work on a national stage by repurposing works in multiple digital formats.
Write for The Conversation
UND is a supporting partner with The Conversation, a nonprofit dedicated to sharing the knowledge of scholars with the general public. A faculty member or graduate student can partner with The Conversation to write a 800-1,000 word article. Those articles can and do wind up being republished by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, CNN, Scientific American and more than 22,000 other outlets.
UND's Partnership with THE CONVERSATION
UND Articles Published in The Conversation
If you are interested in writing for The Conversation, contact:
Tom Dennis, Editor
701.777.6746
tom.dennis@UND.edu
Use Social Media
Social media can help you:
- Build a wider professional network.
- Get feedback on ideas.
- Promote your events and work.
- Keep your research community informed about what you're doing.
- Ensure media find out about your work.
- Comment directly and immediately to current topics.
- Collaborate outside academia with industry, non-profit and government entities.
15 Self-Promotion Tactics for Faculty
You play a critical role in promoting your own expertise. Here are 15 ways you get your expertise shared on a world stage:
- Update your UND Directory profile to include links to your articles, books, publications, CV, research websites, and social media profiles. Your Directory profile typically comes up first in Google when someone searches your name. Your page must be updated and complete. Only you can edit your Directory profile.
- Post or re-share press releases or articles about your research on your own social media channels and those of your college/school.
- Write and place op-eds.
- Take pictures at conferences and share on your social media. Tag the conference and use their hashtag.
- Release a pre-print or working draft of a paper on social media to attract reviewers and citations.
- Find a Wikipedia page relevant to your research and add a reference to your article.
- Use national holidays, popular events or trending news to your advantage. Tailor your message to fit in with the theme of the day to get in the mix with what social media is talking about.
- Use the Elsevier 'share link'. It's a personal, customized short link that you'll receive after final publication of your article. It provides 50 days free access to your newly-published article on ScienceDirect to anyone clicking on the link. We encourage you to share this link on social media. After 50 days the share link will still work but automatically revert to a link to your full text article.
- Comment on other people’s posts related to similar areas of expertise.
- Use industry relevant hashtags and @ mentions to increase visibility. #UNDproud is UND’s official hashtag. Use the free All Hastag tool to find relevant hashtags.
- Post presentation slides on SlideShare.
- Create webinars or social media FAQ sessions and archive them for later viewing.
- Contact relevant newsletters from your institution or society that may be willing to include a story about or mention of your article.
- Start a blog to create awareness of what you are working on.
- Share your events to a boarder audience on social media.
Faculty Social Media Guidelines
Social media can be an important way to promote your journal or article to the wider community. This can be an even more effective strategy when coming from an author or editor as an expert in the field.
Twitter (X) is one of the simplest social media channels to use for public promotion.
Promote your Work
- Don't be shy. You are the best advocate for your work, and self-promotion is a proven way to drive research dissemination.
- Link to your own paper and research (include an image if possible, @ mention relevant co-authors, funders, publishers, etc.)
- Use URL shorteners like biy.ly to help save on space.
Tap into Your Community
- Use relevant hashtags to improve visibility to those not following you.
- We don’t recommend you throw any old hashtag onto any old tweet (#science and #biology likely won’t get you very far), but hashtags can be an effective way to tap into an engaged community on Twitter.
- Communities using #academictwitter, #phdchat and #scholarsunday are a close-knit, enthusiastic group, and being actively involved helps combat the isolation that comes from just starting out on Twitter. Depending on your field of research, these communities can be a major asset in drawing attention to your work.
- Find out which hashtags are popular within your research field as it’ll help you reach others specializing in your field.
- Mention any relevant people/organizations to alert them of your tweets (i.e. @washingtonpost)
Increase your Following
- The more you post, the more followers you’ll attract. Some people are better at engaging a large audience on social media than others, but when it comes to building your base, it’s often just a numbers game, so make an effort to tweet regularly.
- Follow back those who have followed you. Follow other users engaging with relevant hashtags and prominent figures in your field.
Facebook is a great place to create personal connections with others based on common interest. Join groups or like pages around your interests, areas of expertise, school, or workplace. Additionally, users can join groups organized by city, workplace, school, or college. You can also join and create groups according to your interests or areas of expertise.
LinkedIn is not just for career opportunities. It is a global network of professionals. You can include links to your articles when you create your profile, as part of the summary of your professional expertise and accomplishments, or on your feed.
Instagram provides a unique opportunity to create interest in your research through visuals. Infographics, short videos, or visual storytelling of the research journey can be shared on this platform.
YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world and often used as an initial way of researching a topic. If you already have video content relating to your specific journal article, please let us know and we will try to use this in the promotion of your scholarly activities.
Blogs can be an effective way to draw attention to your work, especially when posts are reshared on social media channels. You can also use blogs to buid a subscriber base for e-newsletters. UND offers all faculty a free blogging platform through WordPress.
When I tweet a research finding, many people who normally wouldn't read academic journals are at least made aware of my work.
Share Your Research
We want to help promote your research and accomplishments outside the academy through purposeful and focused efforts. Share as much of your research as you can with us and will reach out to you with some suggested promotion tactics.