Using Social Media for Research Purposes - a guide. Version 2.0

Ways to share your ideas, opinions and research.

You need a forum to share information with your audience. As a minimum you need your own Twitter account [ http://twitter.com ] so that you can Tweet and follow the Twitter feeds of other researchers and research organisations. Important too is a blog either on Wordpress [ http://wordpress.com ] or Blogger [ http://www.blogger.com ]. Sustaining a blog alone can be hard work and time consuming. Consider contributing to another blog as a guest or share a blog with interested colleagues.

The #hashtag

The #hashtag draws together information from Twitter and across social media. Good use of hashtags is a key social media skill, so add this to your social media tool kit.  Each research community has its own popular hashtags e.g. #FOAMed - open access medical education resources or #prehospital - all about prehospital care.  Hashtags are a dynamic area.  Pick up useful hashtags from other Twitter users, search Google for lists of popular hashtags. Some online tools can suggest hashtags. 

Tools to manage your hash tags

#tagboard [ https://tagboard.com ] Freemium.  Create free tagboards for individual tags that collate information across social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google +, Vine, Flikr). tagboards are customisable, add a graphic for example and you can share. Content can be filtered by social network or content type.

#Twubs [ http://twubs.com ] Freemium.  Create a Twub and Tweets with that hashtag are feed into a ticker tape style stream. Register with your Twitteraccount and you can Tweet direct with that hashtag. Designed for events it's a handy tool to Tweet to or about conferences or other professional gatherings. Twubs has an Embed Tool, if your website can cope with that.

Tools to analyse your hashtags

Keyhole [ http://keyhole.co ] Freemium.  Analyses a sample of Twitter or Instagram over 24 hours. Again only really effective for tags that have some profile. Very good statistical summary though with clear graphics. 

RiteTag [ https://ritetag.com ] Freemium.  Analyse your hashtag with a view to checking its value or choosing a better one. RiteTag gives you a really neat organogram to show how your tag relates to other tags.