How to Promote Yourself & Your Work
The Role of Social Media in Promotion, and How to Use it Critically
Researchers can reach practitioners, journalists, and the public at large through social media. It is an attractive promotion method because it can make academic work broadly accessible across disciplinary boundaries and the general public. It also gives the researcher the ability to “push out” their own research rather than rely on a reader to discover it themselves.
While social media is a popular tool used by many researchers to share their work, its place in academia requires a critical and wholistic understanding of it. As librarians, we know that social media has bias in its technology, often reifying racial hierarchy and white supremacy. To use social media to promote your work brings it into this ecosystem, which may look different depending on your positionality The identity of us as a researcher as it relates to the social and political context of a research study. Our positionality is based on our past experiences and shapes how you approach the research process.. For a person of color in academia, social media may be the only space to really find and connect with other like-minded people with similar lived experiences.
Social media also has the power to make someone hypervisible or, conversely, more invisible. For example, someone may become viral because of racialized assumptions (hateful comments or questioning of a Black user), or be hidden because of those same racialized assumptions (algorithms promoting more white users on image base platforms). The digital world’s structures mimic the oppressions that we live with daily. Hence, using this digital world depends on factors such as positionality, aesthetics, platform, and networks. Understanding your digital footprint and its impact is up to you; social media is important in spreading messages, and how you decide to utilize the system is important in its own way. As an academic librarian, understanding this system is important not only as a researcher but also as a librarian who can utilize social media to find your own resources and references.
With all of this in mind: be proud of your work and hype it up!Post it on social media platforms that are important to you and that you are a part of, on your feeds, on Discord or Slack message boards, etc. Tell your friends via snail mail, a text message, or your Substack newsletter. Word of mouth is just as impactful, if not more, than 280 characters out in the digital ether.
For many, self-promotion can feel awkward or unmanageable. In an article in Times Higher Education entitled, “Researchers: fight back against your struggle with self-promotion,” Emma Williams (2021) provides some guidance on how to promote your research without feeling “too sales-y.” She further recommends that promotion should be something you think about from the very start. What is your “why”? Write with these in mind and use them consistently in all communications — your abstract The concise summary of a research article that provides a broad overview of the research being presented., tweets, coffee queue pitches or conference talk. What key terms will help your ideal audiences find your work? Try to choose methods and venues you enjoy or are most comfortable with interacting.
Consider the following reflection question. If you would like to write out your response, use one of the free write pages in your workbook.
Find your favorite TV stars, (non-academic) authors, and scholars on social media. How do they promote their work? Videos? Playlists? Trailers? What do they reveal? What do they not reveal? Are their attempts at promoting their work an attempt that reached you? What attempts would you like to mimic? (It would be great to see an academic article trailer, much like a book trailer!)
Opting Out of Social Media: How to Promote Yourself Without It
Using social media to promote yourself and your work is not a requirement. For many, being on a certain platform or making yourself visible to the public can be very uncomfortable.
Instead, think about your own communities, both inside and outside of librarianship. What professional groups do you interact or communicate with? Who in the field has served as inspiration for your work, or whom you have cited in that work specifically? Who are your friends working in adjacent or other disciplines? Send them your work and encourage them to send you theirs. Perhaps starting your own personal website to showcase your work is more comfortable than posting on social media. Think about self-promotion not as a way to “sell” yourself, but as a way to teach and educate others, something that is perhaps easier for those who are in instructional careers.
Remember to start with your own place of work first — does your library have a news bulletin or internal newsletter? Sharing your work with your colleagues (and your boss) can be a low-lift way to get your research out there. This may also help coworkers and junior faculty learn from you, share ideas, and instigate future collaborations. Think about starting a writing and accountability cohort at your institution or in a virtual setting. (The LibParlor Classifieds is a great place to start.) Practice and model shine theory — mutual investment in helping people as collaborators instead of competitors. By cultivating an environment where everyone is cheering one another on, self-promotion becomes a way to help both yourself and others celebrate victories.
Topic 3 References
Connelly, Rachel, and Kristen Ghodsee. “The Value of Self-Promotion.” Inside Higher Ed. 2011.
Daniels, Jessie, Gregory, Karen, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds. Digital Sociologies. 1st ed. Bristol University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t89cfr.
Miciek, Chris. “The Problem of Bias in Technology.” NACE, May 11, 2021. https://www.naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/the-problem-of-bias-in-technology/
Sow, Aminatou, and Anne Friedman. “Shine Theory.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37360233
“Teaching Technology: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Coding Schools and the Sociology of Social Media.” Logic(s). 2017. https://logicmag.io/justice/tressie-mcmillan-cottom-on-teaching-technology/
Williams, Emma. “Researchers: fight back against your struggle with self-promotion.” Times Higher Education. 2021. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/researchers-fight-back-against-your-struggle-selfpromotion
How to Promote Yourself & Your Work
The Role of Social Media in Promotion, and How to Use it Critically
Researchers can reach practitioners, journalists, and the public at large through social media. It is an attractive promotion method because it can make academic work broadly accessible across disciplinary boundaries and the general public. It also gives the researcher the ability to “push out” their own research rather than rely on a reader to discover it themselves.
While social media is a popular tool used by many researchers to share their work, its place in academia requires a critical and wholistic understanding of it. As librarians, we know that social media has bias in its technology, often reifying racial hierarchy and white supremacy. To use social media to promote your work brings it into this ecosystem, which may look different depending on your positionalityPositionality The identity of us as a researcher as it relates to the social and political context of a research study. Our positionality is based on our past experiences and shapes how you approach the research process.. For a person of color in academia, social media may be the only space to really find and connect with other like-minded people with similar lived experiences.
Social media also has the power to make someone hypervisible or, conversely, more invisible. For example, someone may become viral because of racialized assumptions (hateful comments or questioning of a Black user), or be hidden because of those same racialized assumptions (algorithms promoting more white users on image base platforms). The digital world’s structures mimic the oppressions that we live with daily. Hence, using this digital world depends on factors such as positionality, aesthetics, platform, and networks. Understanding your digital footprint and its impact is up to you; social media is important in spreading messages, and how you decide to utilize the system is important in its own way. As an academic librarian, understanding this system is important not only as a researcher but also as a librarian who can utilize social media to find your own resources and references.
With all of this in mind: be proud of your work and hype it up!Post it on social media platforms that are important to you and that you are a part of, on your feeds, on Discord or Slack message boards, etc. Tell your friends via snail mail, a text message, or your Substack newsletter. Word of mouth is just as impactful, if not more, than 280 characters out in the digital ether.
For many, self-promotion can feel awkward or unmanageable. In an article in Times Higher Education entitled, “Researchers: fight back against your struggle with self-promotion,” Emma Williams (2021) provides some guidance on how to promote your research without feeling “too sales-y.” She further recommends that promotion should be something you think about from the very start. What is your “why”? Write with these in mind and use them consistently in all communications — your abstractAbstract The concise summary of a research article that provides a broad overview of the research being presented., tweets, coffee queue pitches or conference talk. What key terms will help your ideal audiences find your work? Try to choose methods and venues you enjoy or are most comfortable with interacting.
Consider the following reflection question. If you would like to write out your response, use one of the free write pages in your workbook.
Find your favorite TV stars, (non-academic) authors, and scholars on social media. How do they promote their work? Videos? Playlists? Trailers? What do they reveal? What do they not reveal? Are their attempts at promoting their work an attempt that reached you? What attempts would you like to mimic? (It would be great to see an academic article trailer, much like a book trailer!)
Opting Out of Social Media: How to Promote Yourself Without It
Using social media to promote yourself and your work is not a requirement. For many, being on a certain platform or making yourself visible to the public can be very uncomfortable.
Instead, think about your own communities, both inside and outside of librarianship. What professional groups do you interact or communicate with? Who in the field has served as inspiration for your work, or whom you have cited in that work specifically? Who are your friends working in adjacent or other disciplines? Send them your work and encourage them to send you theirs. Perhaps starting your own personal website to showcase your work is more comfortable than posting on social media. Think about self-promotion not as a way to “sell” yourself, but as a way to teach and educate others, something that is perhaps easier for those who are in instructional careers.
Remember to start with your own place of work first — does your library have a news bulletin or internal newsletter? Sharing your work with your colleagues (and your boss) can be a low-lift way to get your research out there. This may also help coworkers and junior faculty learn from you, share ideas, and instigate future collaborations. Think about starting a writing and accountability cohort at your institution or in a virtual setting. (The LibParlor Classifieds is a great place to start.) Practice and model shine theory — mutual investment in helping people as collaborators instead of competitors. By cultivating an environment where everyone is cheering one another on, self-promotion becomes a way to help both yourself and others celebrate victories.
Topic 3 References
Connelly, Rachel, and Kristen Ghodsee. “The Value of Self-Promotion.” Inside Higher Ed. 2011.
Daniels, Jessie, Gregory, Karen, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds. Digital Sociologies. 1st ed. Bristol University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t89cfr.
Miciek, Chris. “The Problem of Bias in Technology.” NACE, May 11, 2021. https://www.naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/the-problem-of-bias-in-technology/
Sow, Aminatou, and Anne Friedman. “Shine Theory.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37360233
“Teaching Technology: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Coding Schools and the Sociology of Social Media.” Logic(s). 2017. https://logicmag.io/justice/tressie-mcmillan-cottom-on-teaching-technology/
Williams, Emma. “Researchers: fight back against your struggle with self-promotion.” Times Higher Education. 2021. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/researchers-fight-back-against-your-struggle-selfpromotion