This is part I of a two part series on how to build your professional brand on social media. Part II can be viewed here.
One way to establish your expertise as a public scholar is to develop and maintain a public scholarly/professional brand. A professional profile represents you, your research, and what you want the world to know about you and your work. It’s what the marketing kids call branding. In this post, we will discuss a number of ways for you to build your professional brand on social media.
Social media is a popular and easy way to build your professional profile AKA your brand. It can help you build awareness of your research and work. In this day and age, social media may be the first point of contact for many. More importantly, some journalists rely on social media to source information, making it a valuable asset in your public engagement journey.
I recognize there is something icky about self-promoting, building a professional brand on social media, etc. etc. The commercialization of academia and the capitalistic nature of social media adds an additional icky layer to this endeavor. But this is your career, your profile, your research, and your decision.
This is important. Social media for professional branding is NOT the end all, be all. Scholars were making a name for themselves long before the internet became a Mark Zuckerberg production. At minimum, scholars can have some sort of accessible professional online profile somewhere…university website, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, Padlet, Academia.edu, etc. that displays their expertise in a more accessible way.
What is your professional brand?
Your brand is you in relation to the work you do. It’s what you want the world to know about your research. It’s how you want to be perceived. Think about a brand you know and trust. Nike, Volkswagon, Delta. There are elements of these brands we have come to know and trust, opting to purchase their services & products without a second thought. Whether it’s consistency in their products, customer service, dependability, etc., we use their products with little trepidation, knowing what to expect. We associate quality (or lack there of) based on brand experience and perception. A good brand stands out in a heavily saturated market.
And this is the goal for scholars who wish to be known for their research. Building a trustworthy and consistent brand around your research.
You are in the knowledge creation business and your brand should represent who you are, what your research stands for, its impact, and its value. You have to do your part in establishing yourself externally beyond your academic community if you want to be known in the public as the authority for a specific research topic.
Your research agenda is your brand
If you think about it on a meta level, your research agenda is your brand and your brand is your research agenda. You’ve dedicated your career to examining a topic (or topics). You spend time cultivating this agenda, sharing your knowledge and expertise (through books, publications, presentations, etc). when academics in your field see your name, they associate it with a specific research topic. this is brand awareness!
Now, as a public scholar, it’s time to shift this outward beyond your academic community. You can build your professional brand on social media due to the very nature of the platforms as social networks where sharing and engaging are encouraged.
Why do you need to build your professional brand on social media?
Awareness
Your professional brand on social media is a first impression. What do you want it to say about you? How do you want to be perceived? And if we know anything about big brands, it’s all about perception.
Think about airlines – why do we associate quality with certain brands? As someone who has traveled internationally via Spirit airlines, this topic sits deep in my soul. Each airline is in the business of moving people from one location to another, so what makes a consumer prefer one airline over another? In part, it is the way each company builds and manages its brand and brand perception, and how we and the people we know experience the airline. Brand messaging, awareness, and perception.
How do you think the public will discover your research if they don’t know who you are? Sure, you have a university-hosted page with your photo, a short bio, and your CV. What about this tells us any story about you, your research, or the impact you want to make? Yhis is a one-dimensional version of you and your work that seldom promotes engagement beyond an email.
To take it to another meta-level, research is all about proving (selling) your thesis and position as plausible, supporting it with facts, data, position points, and counterpoints. so it shouldn’t be too much out of the realm of possibilities to embrace selling yourself and your research ideas both to your academic community and to the public. If you build your professional brand on social media, you can expand awareness around your research.
Benefits
(Academic) Twitter used to be described as an extension of a conference, a space for scholars to create open and ongoing conversations about research. It’s less so these days. But, in the Before Times, I heard enough stories networking and the creation of research collaborations on Twitter that might not have come to fruition without the social platform democratization networking and dismantling systemic hierarchies. When you build your professional brand on social media, it may also help you with career trajectory. And sharing your research on Twitter can positively impact your citation counts!
Risks
Of course, risks are rampant on social media, especially for women. Trolls, colleagues disguised as trolls, miscommunications, unstructured boundaries. etc. are all risk factors. The thing is…the haters will be there regardless, so try not to let them hold you back from doing the work you intend to do. Here are a few resources (1 2 3) for dealing with online harassment.
Ultimately, perception is key when you build your professional brand on social media. Public scholars can either let others dictate how they perceive you and your research, or you can take an active role in creating the narrative.
Who is your scholar/professional identity?
Perception
Determining who your professional brand is requires self-awareness, self-reflection, and external feedback. Your brand should build on your core values. This will guide your decisions as you enter this space. How much time you spend online building your brand, what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to.
How are you currently utilizing your social media platform(s)? What does your bio say about you? What about your posts? If a stranger stumbled upon your social media profile, what would they think within the first posts? And if you are starting new with social media, you have a clean slate to build up from. Perception is a key component to consider as you build your online profile. What you post represents you and your brand.
Managing our many identities
In theory, your research agenda should guide how you build your professional brand on social media. But it is human nature to maintain multiple identities – teacher, mentor, cyclist, partner, Mets fan, parent, scholar, athlete, voter, Ravenclaw, vegan, etc.
Stewart (2016) offered a few points for consideration of our many identities in the public online space: what do your posts convey about your scholarly role and your personal identity? are you comfortable with blurring the line between personal and professional?
I follow loads of people who maintain their personal and professional selves in their social media feeds. it’s a delicate rope to balance on, especially if you have a built-in personal/friendly audience separate from the professional scholarly audience you want to develop. But if melding your personal and professional self on social media makes you feel like your full self, go for it!
Ultimately, who do you want to be seen as? Public scholars should strive to present a professional and consistent brand, while also showing personal elements that humanize them.
Build your professional brand on social media with what time?
Whichever platform(s) you opt to use should feel like a natural fit, not forced or uncomfortable. for many academics, Twitter makes sense. For others, it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Academia.edu, or ResearchGate. There is a learning curve with each platform, so give yourself some grace as you adopt and adapt.
And social media usage can get out of hand. We may find ourself scrolling and doom-scrolling for no reason. Checking our phones for notifications. These are all the things the platform engineers want from us – to keep us engaged on their sites. Social media platforms are literally designed for endless use. Remember – you are in control! A few ways you can combat the urge to check social media constantly:
- Enable notifications so you aren’t checking the platform to see if and when others are engaging with your commentary.
- Use a time monitoring app on your phone and computer that will limit/restrict social media usage after you hit a time frame.
- Use an application like hootsuite to help manage your output (e.g., sending pre-written scheduled posts, etc.) so you can feel less pull to the platform(s).
It takes time to build your professional brand on social media, and social media is just one option to aid in this venture. It can be as simple as using social media platforms to curate content. It’s not the only option, but may be the easiest route depending on your professional goals.
Tl;dr
Brand development can aid in establishing your expertise in your academic community and in public. Public scholars should look at their research agenda as their brand, and utilize social media as an outlet to build a professional profile on social media.
