3 ways to save time when building an academic Twitter profile

Following on from Kathy’s excellent tips on getting started with Twitter earlier on this blog, here are my top three tips on building your academic Twitter presence in the most efficient way possible, to save time and find both content and contacts of interest to you.

1. Follow others: our matching service and our lists

Twitter will suggest accounts to you but you might also like to take a look at some of our lists of Twitter accounts. There are both lists that we’re watching and lists that we created, for example:

• Supporting researchers – here we add people like librarians, ARMA members and others whose role it is to support researchers.
• Women in research – our list of those with an interest in seeing more women in research.
• Academic humour – we have gathered a few more light-hearted or amusing accounts in this list.
• Researchers who blog – our list of researchers that we have come across, who have a blog as well as a twitter feed.

Those are just a few of our lists, so do take a look at the others to see if there is one that piques your interest. Also, if you think we’re missing an important account for one of our lists, then please do tell us: you can tweet at us directly or leave a comment on this blog, below.

2. Watch hashtags of interest

Aside from watching accounts through lists or from those you follow, you might choose to watch certain hashtags, and in this way you can discover others who are interested in the same things as you. A tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck for example makes this very easy to do. We’ve blogged about using hashtags before.

3. Gain twitter followers

It’s simple: more followers mean more attention for your tweets and your work. Sometimes, people will follow you back if you follow them, so do look for accounts that you can follow. Another way to signal that you are present on Twitter is to link to your Twitter account from other places on the web.  Our Digital Identity Health Check also provides other tips on places and ways to link your online profiles together for maximum visibility.

Image credit: Jeff Turner on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)