While there is not a magic number of how many times a day you should post, it is important to remain consistent and avoid sporadic posting. If you are worried about finding the time, have a think about what you are already producing which you could share online and how you could integrate social media into your day to day work flows. Maybe use your social media feed as a way of curating a reading list or store ideas to refer to later. 

It’s important to anticipate what will be trending or engaged with. One way to do this is to lookout for Twitter hours relevant to your field. One that would be worth participating in is LTHE Tweetchat, which a Higher Education Twitter hour that takes place every Wednesday, which is a good opportunity to pose questions and network with the wider academic community.

Another approach is to be aware of national awareness days that are relevant to your research area. National awareness days tend to be the most talked about topic on any given day on Twitter so it’s one of the best ways to reach new audiences and get picked up by news outlets.

Also check in with central marketing teams to see if there are any UOB campaigns that teams will be focusing on – ones that would be worth taking part in is #HelloBrum, which trends on most Open Days, #myUoBday, research hot spots run by the Colleges and Birmingham Heroes

Twitter doesn’t classify itself as a social media network. It’s actually found within the news section of the app store so a big part of building a personal strategy will be to be able to react to relevant Twitter trends as they are breaking. So be aware of current industry news and use your research to steer some of those conversations.

Conferences and Twitter go really well together – nearly all conferences have a hashtag, which creates a short-term community filled with people in your target audience. Most people use text or link tweets so you can easily make your tweets stand out by attaching interesting photos, by asking questions and sharing key stats. Think of conferences as means of expose and a way to develop your network. 

The first step is to optimise your profile to ensure it reflects your purpose on Twitter. A great example is Professor Kalwant Bhopal's profile as she outlines she is a professor in her Twitter name (Prof Kalwant Bhopal), that she lectures at the University of Birmingham, which is a common search query on the platform and what her academic interests are, which again can be found through search queries. She also has a photo of her published work as the header image and her pinned tweet demonstrates how eminent she is in her field having pinned a tweet with 350 retweets.

It's important to build and nurture relationships with the right people. Using the search bar on Twitter, if you input your research area you will find a list of individuals and organisations associated with that keyword search. 

In the screenshot below, we have searched for cyber security to find the National Cyber Security Centre page. By clicking on the 'Following' tab on their profile we can see who they are following. Here you can pick and choose who you want to follow from this list and engage with or ‘professionally stalk’ by replying to their tweets, retweeting and investing time in those that repay the favour.

Whilst seeking influencers within your sector is is also worthwhile nurturing relationship with your colleagues at the University of Birmingham. There is a Twitter list of academics at the University of Birmingham, which we would recommend that you subscribe to find out what is happening within our own academic community.

Whilst developing your presence on social media it is useful to seek out those pages or individuals that you think are currently doing things well on social media so that you can emulate some of their approaches. If you're unsure which accounts are influential within your industry you can use tools such as Social Authority that will help you to follow and target key influencers in your space and see where you position in your industry.