How can I promote my publication on social media?

Social media and academic community sites are a valuable (and free!) opportunity to announce your research to a potentially very large audience. Currently, the most important platforms are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you have your own accounts, ensure that the publication is announced soon after publication. Institutional accounts are likely to be handled by a research assistant, intern or administrator, who you’ll need to contact. If your work was funded, remember to mention and link to the funder’s profile in the post, so that they are also alerted to the publication details and are credited for their contribution to your research. They are then also likely to share your post more widely.

In www.linkedin.com, add the article to the “publications” section in your profile. Also, LinkedIn groups offer a fantastic opportunity to advertise research. Check out specialized groups pertinent to your work or overarching groups that tend to be widely followed. For example, go to the LinkedIn page and start a new “Discussion” about your research; frame it in such a way that will encourage people to engage with it.

If you have an account with them, add the publication details to academic profile sites (such as Academia.edu and/or Research Gate). The journal should be already listed on the site, however having the content mentioned and linked again will help to raise awareness of your publication, and also alert users with similar keywords to your post. To reach the largest number of members, the keywords/research interests attached to the article should be as broad as possible. Do not upload the PDF of your publication to your profile, as this can lower the ability of search engines to rank the article highly. As your publication is freely available online, simply add the DOI link to the publication and the page will automatically be linked to the article and help to increase its ‘findability’ in online searches.

For a convincing argument on why posting your publications on social media platforms is a valuable task, see Melissa Terras' blog, or view an LSE post on how journals with active Twitter accounts have wider dissemination and an increase in citations.

A list of additional suggested tasks for helping to increase the impact of a publication is available for download.