Should we increase website's visibility through popular social networks?

groups » Fellow's Matters » Should we increase website's visibility through popular social networks?

• Liam Boggs 28 Jan 2013

  Hello Dat & Tafi,

  My colleagues at The Global Health Network and TDR have discussed the idea raised for a fellow’s social media page. Social Media has become an important part of information dissemination and is gathering momentum in the world of academia. With regard to TDR CDF Social media there are some potential issues with branding and hosting which means that are hands are tied at present. However; with this in mind there are other avenues for publicising fellow’s achievements, increasing the schemes visibility and keeping everyone in touch.

  The Global Health Network is constantly expanding with more than 15 individual research areas and over 46,000 unique visitors to the network. This should be the first port of call for disseminating information amongst your academic peers as Blogs, Articles and Bookmarks. As previously mentioned The Global Health Network has also launched a Twitter (@info_TGHN) and Facebook account (https://www.facebook.com/TheGlobalHealthNetwork). Please feel free to link your social media accounts to these outlets as they are a valuable source of information and we are always more than happy to post news and material relating to TDR fellows. If there is something specific you want to disseminate then we can post across the network and all our social media. The Network has been specifically designed to share information and I hope that you will utilise these avenues to publicise material.

  I am always more than happy to assist in the upload of contents to the network and social media steams.
  

• tcmarukutira 8 Dec 2012

  I am behind involving social media to improve visibility of the program and hopefully more fellows can come on board. I suppose the starting point will be facebook.

• Liam Boggs 3 Dec 2012

  Hi Dat,
  I agree the social media page should be open access and this site can remain closed access. The social Media page will need to be regularly updated with current info (achievements/publications etc.) which will require oversight. I would be interested to see what the other fellows opinions are on this idea and if they would like to take an active role. The next newsletter is due in January so before then I could send a group email to gather some opinions. Facebook would be the best place to set up a page to begin with and if this proves successful we can think about Twitter (generally Twitter requires a lot more attention than Facebook due to the nature of the output from this Social Media). We will also need to clarify any branding with TDR.

• Vu Quoc Dat 24 Nov 2012

  The social media page should be open to public. Which is private among fellows could be kept by linking to the website. In my opinion, a social page could help to:
  1) keep fellows in tough
  2) share fellow's published articles
  3) increase fellowship's visibility
  ...

• Liam Boggs 22 Nov 2012

  I think this is a great idea as many people are would appreciate a link to the fellowship in their social media stream. Others may not be interested or wish to hav ethis link but there will no requirement to join. As with this website do you think the Social Media Page should be private accesss or open for all to see updates on the fellowship?

• Vu Quoc Dat 16 Nov 2012

  While we are waiting for comments, I think we should consider to start a pilot social media page now. We might see the differences.

• Liam Boggs 22 Oct 2012

  It is very timely that you have raised this valid comment Dat.

  With the boom in social media over the past several years we are now at the point where individuals are accustomed to seeing posts from companies, organisations, institutions and businesses in their social media news stream. This now also applies to many academic institutions that have launched Facebook and Twitter accounts to accompany their websites. This way information can be streamed into ones social feeds rather than having to search out this information. To raise its online presence and keep all avenues of information open The Global Health Network has also recently launched a Twitter (@info_TGHN) and Facebook account (https://www.facebook.com/TheGlobalHealthNetwork).

  This is a great discussion point and I would love to hear all your views on the use of social media in academia and also what you think of our social media pages?