The Research Excellence Framework (REF) outcomes are due to be published in December this year. While the submission deadline has passed for many it’s a time to review their research, improve visibility and establish work as widely as possible.

Social media is a great way to make your work available, increase views, and ensure outputs, impact and environment scores are maintained and improved for REF2020.

Which way is best for promoting your research? These top three social media channels could work well for you, as they have done for others in the sector:

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to communicate and promote your research within the public domain and the scholarly community. A regularly updated blog increases readership. And by adding topical content within the healthcare community, a blog will drive online traffic towards your research and enable you to gather feedback on your ideas.

Take a look at BioMed Central’s Blog. This is a great example of how varied content drives traffic and keeps visitors flowing to their site. By using guest researchers as bloggers for their site, they ensure that a variety of healthcare topics are covered and the content is of interest to different sectors within the healthcare community.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro blogging site which lets you use short messages (140 character “tweets”) to share information about your research and research related events.

In the age of real-time news, social media has flourished. Twitter provides accurate information and statements from healthcare professionals and governing bodies. NHS organisations, Research Councils, universities, hospitals and even the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt have a Twitter account and use it to engage with the public with efficient, direct communication in an open, transparent and accessible way.

Twitter is also a great tool for promoting healthcare conferences and events. Many people use #hashtags to join in a conversation about the day, share thoughts on presentations and information, and to give feedback to organisers.

By using #hcsm (the hashtag for Health Care Social Media), you can join in the global Twitter chat conversation scheduled for 8pm CT every Sunday. Follow @HealthSocMed for updates, send your suggestions for chat topics and find links to previous weeks chat transcripts all on their profile feed. They’re a great starting point for anyone new to Twitter and involved in the Healthcare community, with over 24,000 followers worldwide.

Other Social Networking Sites

When you mention social networking, most people think of Facebook. But while Facebook may be good for your personal life, it isn’t necessarily recommended for your professional work.

There are, however, other social networking sites that are specifically designed for professionals and academics, allowing you to link to published papers, create and maintain your public CV, connect to others in the Healthcare community and share experiences.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most widely used general professional networking platform. But there are others that are useful specifically for the healthcare industry. Sites such as Researcher ID and ORCiD are also available to you and are free to join. Creating a profile on any one of these will make your research more readily available to the public and your peers.

Open Researcher and Contributor iD (ORCiD)

Launched in October 2013 ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor iD) may be the new kid on the block, but it’s not going anywhere. Many journals are now asking for your ORCiD ID when you submit, and it is fast becoming one of the most used registries. It improves the visibility of researchers work and improving citations.

ORCiD is being adopted by Universities UK wide following the release of the 2013 report ‘Use cases and views on the future use of ORCID in UK Higher Education’ in which positive outcomes were found which would benefit future REF submissions.

In the ever-changing and expanding world of healthcare, it is important to keep abreast of trends, changes and research developments. The free social media tools available to you allow you to do just this, as well as to promote your work and research within healthcare.

Making yourself and your research as visible as possible through an online presence is one of the most important ways of doing this. So read up, sign up and make yourself visible and available to the online health community and the wider public.

Your research is something to shout about, so make sure it’s heard in all of the right places.

How do you promote your research?

If you work in the healthcare industry, which – if any – social networking sites do you use professionally? Which would you recommend?

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