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1 Personal Branding and Social Media in Academia

Academic researchers who use Twitter to inform their followers about a recently published article, universities that post stories on Facebook about alumni and corresponding career paths, research institutes that present their profiles on LinkedIn – a growing number of examples illustrates that different stakeholders in academia increasingly start to use social media to communicate with their audiences. On the one hand, this development is not surprising, since social media has already become an established element of the marketing mix for most companies and offers a wide range of opportunities [1, 2]. On the other hand, most academic researchers probably do not fully seize the manifold opportunities of this new world of online communication. But why should a researcher engage on social media sites?

Firstly, the emergence of social media has fundamentally simplified communication. Especially for individuals, it is today easier and more cost-effective than ever before to get in contact with others around the world. Consequently, researchers’ associated organizations (e.g. the university they work for) have relinquished control over communication, reputation and branding to the individuals who are associated with those organizations. Secondly, competition between researchers is increasing and a long-term academic career is hard to achieve. A survey across 8,216 researchers at 68 UK higher education institutions has revealed that there is a mismatch between career expectations and realistic career possibilities among academics [3]. It is therefore of utmost importance that researchers face competition and differentiate themselves from others.

Today, in many cases, high-quality research alone might not be enough to stand out from other scholars. In response, we argue that perceptual aspects will play an increasingly important role as a differentiator. This issue is especially addressed by the concepts of personal branding and self-marketing, which have been frequently discussed in comparable contexts [e.g. 4]. Self-marketing includes all “activities undertaken by individuals to make themselves known in the marketplace” [5, p. 590], and personal branding builds on the premise “that everyone has a personal brand” [5, p. 590]. Both concepts address the same idea, namely to transfer marketing and branding principles from a corporate environment to individuals (hereafter only referred to as “personal branding”). The aims of personal branding are both to be known in the marketplace (for example as a potential employee) and to differentiate from others.

By transferring personal branding to the context of academic researchers, the question may arise of ‘what the personal brand of an academic researcher is’. We argue, in fact, that researchers’ personal brands are fundamentally determined by their activities [6]. Depending on the research environment and personal preferences, there is a broad variety of activities that researchers can engage with. It is a common assumption that peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences constitute the main research process and output. However, many researchers are also involved in teaching activities or sometimes serve as consultants for companies or even governments. Ultimately, the individual portfolio of activities determines their personal brand as a researcher.

Against this background, a key task of aspiring scholars will be to build their personal brand as researchers. For this purpose, social media is perfectly suited to support this process [7]. In response, we present a guiding framework for academic researchers that will help to fully embrace the opportunities that social media sites can offer. Academics will learn (or deepen their knowledge) on how to utilize social media sites to communicate their personal brand. Although we will focus primarily on an individual’s perspective, the suggestions of this article might also be beneficial for academic organizations, such as universities or research institutes, which can use this article to reflect on their current social media strategies. Our framework is based on a review of articles from academic journals, the business press, as well as on discussions with representatives of social media agencies and social media managers of large corporations.

2 A Communication Strategy in Academia

2.1 Notice that You Act in a Network

As already discussed, the emergence of social media has shifted the power of communication in favor of individuals. Thereby, social media has forced us to view both organizations and individuals as a network of players standing on the same field (see Fig. 1). Before social media, organizations mainly had to take care of their own brand. Today, however, individuals associated with an organization have their own digital identities, represented through an increasing engagement on social media sites. This leads to a greater interdependency among organizations and individuals in terms of their communication activities. For example, a university today has its official website and is moreover present on several social media platforms. Yet, the individuals working for the university, such as professors or other researchers, increasingly build their own digital identities on social media platforms.

Fig. 1.
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Digital network of players in the academic sphere (example)

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Social network analysis [8, 9] suggests that the members of a network significantly influence each other. If one player, for example, has a very good reputation (e.g. a university), this reputation is automatically passed on to the associated individuals. It is, however, possible that negative perceptions of individual network members harm others in the network. As a foundation of those effects, the concept of word of mouth (WOM) communication plays a central role [10], because it emphasizes the power of communication activities within a network, which can hardly be controlled by individuals within this entity. Of course, the effects suggested by social network analysis and WOM have been valid before the emergence of social media [11]. Nevertheless, the effects of WOM become even more powerful in the online environment, as social media helps to distribute information faster than in offline networks [9, 12]. By that, social media has strengthened individual members of those new networks compared to traditional offline social networks, and has thus enhanced the dynamics and complexity within those networks. Because of this mutual dependency, we argue that it is important that all players in a network are aware of their great responsibility to build and communicate their (personal) brands in a way that the network can benefit. In the following, we present concrete ideas about how to organize researchers’ social media activities.

2.2 Identify Your Target Audiences

The foundation of all communication activities is an understanding of the target audiences [13]. In fact, there is a broad variety of different stakeholders who could be interested in a researcher’s activities. However, we believe that many researchers underestimate the extent of potential followers on social media. We have thus developed a simple model (social media follower continuum; see Fig. 2) that can help to illustrate the potential (and the challenge) to reach different target audiences.

Fig. 2.
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Social media follower continuum

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The social media follower continuum assumes that potential social media followers (people who follow your activities on social media) can be aligned between opposite ends of a continuum. On the one hand, there are people with high involvement or interest towards you. Those people can be described as easy followers because it might not be hard to win them as followers. Probably, most stakeholders who know you in person are easy followers, such as colleagues, close business partners or even family members and friends. It is also possible that students become easy followers when, for example, certain course information is regularly communicated via a social media platform. On the other hand, there might probably exist people with complete indifference towards you because they are characterized with no direct or indirect involvement or interest towards you. We call those people tough nuts, because it is difficult – and probably not necessary – to convince them to follow your activities.

Between easy followers and tough nuts, there is the persuadable crowd. This group is composed of different (potentially) interested parties, who do not follow you automatically, but who might be interested in your activities (now or in the future). For example, there are people who are interested in a certain topic and who want to follow thought leaders in that specific field. As a result, they continuously decide which experts to follow on e.g. Twitter depending on their perception of those experts. The subsequent question is how to provide relevant content to members of the persuadable crowd, aiming to persuade them to follow your social media activities.

Against this background, we suggest identifying existing – but also aspired – target audiences. For most academic researchers, the international research community in a certain field might be an important target audience. Students with an interest in offered teaching activities might be another target audience. In addition, surrounding firms or institutes could be a further target audience, which might be interested in your activities. Overall, the identification and understanding of different target audiences are fundamental during the following phase of content creation. Only if you understand who your target audiences are, you can adequately communicate with them [13].

2.3 Embrace the Idea of Content Marketing and Select Valuable Content for Your Audience

Based on the identification of your target audiences, it is important to understand their needs and the topics they are interested in, because this understanding is fundamental to answer the question of what to communicate. The idea of sharing content that is relevant and valuable to your target audiences is referred to as content marketing [14]. The concept has increasingly gained importance, especially in the field of digital marketing [15]. A reason for this is that social media users are confronted with a growing amount of content every day. Therefore, the relevance and value of content from a user’s perspective are increasingly important when it comes to the question of whether to engage with a social media post or not. This importance is further emphasized by the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory.

U&G theory suggests that individuals strive to receive gratifications through their media usage [16]. As a result, social media users adjust their online behavior according to their gratifications. On social media sites, studies have shown that users search for entertainment, information and social interactions [e.g. 17, 18]. Content strategies of academics should therefore consider these findings and provide content that fulfills the needs of their target audiences, because communication effectiveness is closely related to it.

Against this background, it can be useful to establish certain content categories, which are specifically designed for the already defined target audiences. For example, a researcher in the field of entrepreneurship could publish information about (own) research articles, pictures from academic conferences, interesting and valuable information about entrepreneurship in general, tutorial videos about what is important when founding a company or behind-the-scenes pictures of his/her work day. As you can imagine, there are a lot of possibilities to generate interesting and valuable content for your target audiences.

Barack Obama can serve as a lively example for the establishment of a content category. On a regular basis, Barack Obama has published pictures which have portrayed him as a nice and accessible person, for instance, when he went for lunch with his staff at a public burger restaurant. Another example would be a picture of him in the Oval Office of the White House, playing around with a football during a meeting. These examples show that Barack Obama has obviously established “behind-the-scenes” content as a central content category of his communication strategy. One could also argue that this part of his content strategy has been successful, because many people, in fact, see him as a nice and accessible person.

When content categories are established, the goal is to find and publish valuable content on a regular basis. However, it might be not entirely clear which online channels are suitable for the communication purposes of academic researchers. In the next section, we therefore outline different types of social media sites.

2.4 Communication Channels: Which Platform to Use?

The landscape of social media sites is continuously changing in terms of new sites evolving and others losing relevance [19]. From a researcher’s perspective, of course, not all social media platforms are reasonable to engage on. For example, it might not be necessary to become active on the video messaging application Snapchat, because – up to now – it is not at all a suitable channel for researcher-related content and is mostly used by teenagers. However, there exist platforms where it is not as easy to decide whether to use them or not. The mobile photo-sharing and social networking service Instagram, for example, is hardly suitable to communicate new research articles, but could be a great channel to (visually) tell stories about your life as a researcher (e.g. at academic conferences), with the aim of adding some shine to this life and thereby sharpen your personal brand. In general, we suggest to stay open for new emerging platforms and to continuously reflect on the landscape of platforms in regard to their potential for your own portfolio of used social media platforms. In the following, we elaborate on different types of social media sites.

First of all, social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are generally used both in a private and business context [20]. With currently more than 1.5 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform [21]. Although the site is primarily used for private purposes, most brands are present with their own fan pages. Also for researchers, Facebook offers great potential, because of the high number of active users. Next to Facebook, Twitter might also be a suitable channel for your communication activities, because the micro blog has continuously evolved to a network, which is especially used by organizations to publish all sorts of information [22]. Simultaneously, users follow interesting organizations, thought leaders, magazines etc. to assess relevant information.

Social networking sites, which are primarily used in the business context, are called business networking sites [2]. Currently, the (by far) most used business networking site is LinkedIn. Individuals can create personal profiles and connect with their peers. Originally, most people on LinkedIn used the platform mainly to showcase their resume. In recent years, LinkedIn has moved away from the static platform it has been in the beginning but has evolved to an increasingly active network. Today, next to individuals’ profiles, most companies, universities and institutes are present on LinkedIn and use the platform increasingly as a communication channel. For academic researchers, LinkedIn is a great platform to stay in touch with other researchers and to stand out by publishing content, which is valuable for their network.

Another important piece in the portfolio of useful social media sites is networking platforms and content communities that specifically focus on academic researchers (e.g. SSRN, Google Scholar, Mendeley, ResearchGate). Those platforms are greatly suitable to showcase your research and to also connect with other researchers. Although there are already several of those platforms, it has been recently noticeable that various sites continuously emerge into a combination of networking platform and content community. The Social Science Research Network (SSRN, www.ssrn.com), for example, is devoted to the dissemination of scientific research but has recently announced that they will further expand the possibilities of creating personal profiles. Another example is Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), which has been primarily used as a program to manage research articles. Yet, the possibility to also showcase research papers and to get in contact with other researchers has changed the way Mendeley is used today. A third example is ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net). It is also a social networking site, aiming to connect researchers worldwide and offering the possibility to present research papers. Finally, Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com) has already evolved into an important platform for most researchers, due to the presentation of popular citation indices (e.g. h-index), which are increasingly important in academia. In contrast to established platforms, relatively new websites such as ACADEMIA (www.academia.edu) are emerging, having a similar value proposition to ResearchGate.

Regardless of your decision on which sites to be present, it is important that your profile is always updated on all sites you are active on. For this, you can use, for example, an Excel sheet with each row containing a published paper. The columns are then used for all the platforms on which you want to publish your research papers (either just the reference or the actual file). Thereby, it is relatively simple to keep the overview, although you have profiles on several sites.

A further and important cornerstone within a social media strategy is a non-social-media-website, on which you can publish information about your activities in detail. This could be your affiliated organization’s official website or another website that you control yourself. As we will describe below, the optimal publication of content on social media sites requires one to present content in a very short way, because a short message length is more effective or even obligatory (e.g. Tweets on Twitter cannot have more than 140 characters). Therefore, it is necessary on social media sites to publish posts that include a link to your non-social-media-website, where the content is presented in more detail for those who want to further engage with this content.

3 Organizing Your Social Media Management

3.1 Polish Your Profiles Across All Platforms

Before you engage in the daily work of social media management, it is important to review your profiles on all platforms you are present on. It is not only important that all profiles look and feel professional, but it is also necessary that all profiles are aligned to your overall (personal) brand strategy. Decide which pictures and copy texts (e.g. your biography) you want to use, and distribute these elements across your platforms. If it is necessary, adjust the elements according to the needs of individual sites. By that approach, a consistent look and feel across platforms is ensured, although there might be reasonable adjustments because of varying platform architectures or mechanisms.

3.2 Establish a Workflow

Since most academic researchers do not employ social media managers who are responsible for their social media activities, it is of great importance to establish a workflow that minimizes the overall social media effort, but yet ensures professional social media communication. We consider the social media workflow as a process that includes more people than the individual researcher because researchers often work in a team. As a consequence, our process can be used by individuals and by teams, as the overall mechanisms remain the same.

We suggest a continuously running, three-step process that organizes the workflow according to content creation, preparation and communication (see Fig. 3). The basic idea is to avoid that people think too much towards single channels (“What can I do on Facebook today?”), because it can be considered as not efficient to think about channels separately. Instead, the content should be in the center of all considerations. After you have decided what content is worth sharing, you have to select suitable channels and prepare the content for publication. In the following, we elaborate on these three phases of social media management.

Fig. 3.
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Social media management workflow

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In the content creation phase, possible content has to be collected. It is important that everyone who participates in this task is open for topics that are possibly interesting for the already defined target audiences. Stanford University, for example, has implemented a series for their social media channels, in which they introduce members of the staff. One episode was a story on an employee who has been preparing sandwiches on the Stanford campus for 40 years. The story was presented in an emotional way and received a high amount of positive user interaction. This example illustrates that the openness for relevant and interesting stories is an important element during the content creation phase. It is furthermore crucial that content creation does not only involve the detection of relevant content, but also the generation of shareable media such as (good) pictures or videos (a photo taken with your smartphone is better than no photo!). The content has then to be sent to a central position, which is controlled by the person responsible for content preparation. For example, the content could be centrally saved on a shared network drive or by using a web service such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

In the second phase, the person who is responsible for content preparation (referred to as social media manager) has to select and prepare the content for publication. Because of the platform differences, it is of particular importance to optimize the content according to the individual requirements of the selected channels. The social media manager is moreover responsible that the content is aligned to the overall content strategy. When researchers work alone, they have to fulfill both the role of content creators, as well as the role of the social media manager. When researchers are working in a team, it might be beneficial that the social media manager is a person with a great affinity for social media and communication.

In the content communication phase, the social media manager publishes the content on various platforms. Since it might not always be reasonable to publish every kind of content on all platforms, the social media manager has to decide on which platforms a certain story should be published. For example, a photo showing you at a conference dinner in Venice might be worth sharing on Facebook, but not applicable for LinkedIn, because LinkedIn – up to now – is typically used for more “serious” content. Since it can be quite confusing to maintain the overview about different posts on various social media platforms, we recommend using an editorial plan (see Fig. 4). In the simplest form, an Excel spreadsheet can be used to plan the posts and to note on which platforms a post should be published. Thereby, it is easy to maintain control over the communication activities across platforms at all times.

Fig. 4.
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Editorial plan (simplified example)

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3.3 Understand Your Channels and Strive for Operational Excellence

If you decide to engage on a certain social media site, it is of utmost importance to completely understand the rules and mechanisms of the channel, and to strive for operational excellence. But why is this so important? Firstly, on social networking sites, your posts have to compete with posts of users’ friends or simply with funny cat videos. In addition, most users are confronted with a very large amount of information and decide very fast whether to further engage with a certain post or to continue scrolling down the almost endless list of posts in their timeline. It is therefore important that your post catches users’ attention (see also U&G theory, which is explained above). Secondly, the high amount of content has led social networking sites to filter posts to a certain degree. In this context, the amount of post interaction is very important, because it determines the number of people who will potentially see a post in their news feed. On Facebook, for example, the initial number of likes, comments and shares that a post receives indicates the “relevance” of the post, assessed by the mysterious and frequently cited “Facebook algorithm”. This relevance subsequently determines how many users will see the post in their timeline. Consequently, the degree of post interaction in terms of likes, comments, and shares will significantly affect the number of people who will potentially engage with its content. It is therefore essential to design posts the “right” way to maximize post popularity – but what is the “right” way?

Several empirical studies have already focused on the antecedents of post popularity on social networking sites [e.g. 23, 24]. Those studies have shown that posts with attached pictures and videos are significantly more successful in terms of user interaction compared to posts including other attachments such as links to external websites. It was moreover found that a short amount of text is beneficial because social networking sites are typically used to access information very fast.

Although prior studies have often focused specifically on Facebook or Twitter, we assume that revealed findings can also be transferred to other platforms. In general, to optimize social media effectiveness, posts should include an appealing or interesting picture or video. A short text can serve as an appetizer for those who want to know more about the featured message. The text might also include a link, which directs interested users to a more detailed presentation of the content on, for example, your university’s official website. With this approach, the content is presented at different detail levels, and interested users can decide how deep they want to engage with your content. To further reduce the amount of text in a post, we recommend the use of short links (e.g. bit.ly). We furthermore want to emphasize that, on social networking sites, it is important to publish content on a regular basis [1]. It is hard to say what the best frequency is, as it also depends on the platform. Three to five posts per week might be a reasonable frequency for researchers to publish on their social networking sites. However, since social media sites are highly dynamic, it can also be beneficial to publish more, if the content is valuable to the target audiences.

Finally, it has to be stated that the above-mentioned ideas on how to reach operational excellence on social media sites have to be understood as a first step only. Researchers who want to successfully engage in this sphere may have to read through a few of those numerous guidebooks, which can be found on the Internet, and might also have to consider the following statement of an unknown author: “Social media is a lot of fun when it is done right. But when it is done right, it is even more work.”

4 Conclusion

Studies comparing academics’ career expectations and realistic career possibilities indicate that academic researchers already face a high level of competition, and differentiation becomes increasingly critical. Although scholars’ most important quality indicator is their research output, perceptional aspects become more and more important to differentiate from others. Therefore, self-marketing and personal branding can be used to actively shape public perception in a favorable way. For this purpose, social media sites offer great potential. Our article has therefore presented a guiding framework for researchers on how to utilize social media to effectively build their personal brand. Of course, this article is not a final answer to all open questions in the field of social media; nevertheless, it might have opened your mind in regard to the great opportunities social media can offer, especially in academia.