Build your Twitter network
Twitter relies on you sharing content to your network – people and organisations you follow. In turn you want to gain followers, build your network, and increase the opportunities for your research to be seen by a wider audience.
The fastest way to build your network is to find a person on Twitter in the same field of research as you and replicate their account. Look at who they follow and follow those relevant to your research.
The more relevant people you follow the more they will follow you and help to grow your network. You can use the search box to search for named colleagues, friends, research groups or institutions.
Other ways to grow your connections include:
- Use keywords – for example, if your field is artificial intelligence, then you could type that into the search box to yield people who had interesting things to say.
- On your profile page, there are some recommendations: “similar to you”.
- Follow the people who post interesting tweets that you want to pass on or “retweet”.
- Look at your followers’ followers.
Once you have started following people, you will find that they often start following you. Twitter is very reciprocal.
You can stop following someone simply by going into your list of followers which appears on your profile page, and mouse over the follow bar until the word “unfollow” comes up, then click.
You can also block someone sending spam or malware by clicking on their name, then on the small head icon next to the “follow” button, when options to block or report will appear.