Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor
College of Public Health
SOCIAL MEDIA FOR
NETWORKING AND
SCHOLARSHIP
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA?
Networking, collaboration,
advice, mentoring,
commiseration, finding cool
research & people
Publicize your work & brand
yourself
http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/tools/guidelines/pdf/socialmediatoolkit_bm.pdf
A TOUR OF SOCIAL MEDIA
BLOGS
Any kind of personal “web log”. Free at Blogger
(Google-owned), WordPress, more. Typically
allow comments on posts.
BLOGGING
Free sites: Blogger, Wordpress, Weebly
BLOGGING
Over 1 billion active users; “Friends” (bidirectional
info) and “Pages” (typically unidirectional)
“Microblogging” site; no more than 140 characters
allowed per “tweet.” “Followers” instead of “friends”
500 million active users; 340 million tweets per day
NETWORKING: HASHTAGS
#ecrchat (early career resources)
#HigherEd
#pubHT (public health talk)
#STEM
#IamScience
#meded
#hcsm (health care social media)
#digitalhealth
Regular #words, conferences (#ASM2012)
GENERAL ADVICE/QUESTIONS
GOOGLE PLUS
“Google’s Facebook”—150 million active users,
“circle” people instead of “friend” or “follow.”
“Hangouts” and “chats”
More “professional” social networking, 175
million members
YOUTUBE User-generated video content; over 3 billion hours of
video are watched every month. Google-owned.
Picture/short video sharing site
Over 100 million users; ~2 years old
WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?
Allow for dialogue—commenting,
response, interaction
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA?
Continuing education
Good way to filter literature & contacts
by following relevant sites/people on
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
Branding
What will students or potential
colleagues find when they Google you?
YOU JUST NEVER KNOW
New collaborations Funding?
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-to-Start-Tweeting/26065
LINKS
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/09/27/social-media-
for-scientists-part-1-its-our-job/
http://www.biolbull.org/content/222/2/85.full
http://www.asmcue.org/documents/ASMCUE2011.pdf
http://www.biodiversityinfocus.com/blog/2012/01/02/twitter-for-scientists-
and-why-you-should-try-it-scienceshare/
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-to-Start-Tweeting/26065/
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
http://www.zelnio.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2012-Thaler-et-al-
Digital-Environmentalism-2012-preprint.pdf
http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/16/twitter-goes-to-
college-
https://twitter.com/i/#!/sciencebase/scientwitters/members
http://medcitynews.com/2012/02/15-healthcare-twitter-hashtags-you-
should-follow/