Public Understanding of Science Blog

  By Cristina Rigutto  &   Elena Milani Twitter lists are a simple way of grouping feeds of all the people you want to hear from on a given topic, place, organisation or even event. What makes them interesting is that, unlike your home feed, lists aren't affected by Twitter's algorithms and will display only the tweets from accounts you put on that list. Lists are also a great tool for helping your people to get to know each other better, improve networking, and connect with those who matter most to you, such as: Authors that publish in your field Research team members Colleagues from other organisations Journals in your field Alumni of a university degree or course Participants of a Twitter Chat you hosted People who share a common interest with you Speakers or attendees you met at a conference Journalists or blogger who writes about your field of research Research funding bodies relevant to your field You can create your own list (Twitter allows up to 1000 lists pe...

By Elena Milani & Cristina Rigutto Nowadays, if you want to reach the academic community online and share your research outputs with other scholars or journalists, the first place to be is Twitter. However, just being on Twitter is not enough; you need to know how to use it effectively.  For this reason, we, Elena and Cristina - the former and current blog and social media editors of Public Understanding of Science, decided to write a series of posts about the nuts and bolts of Twitter for academics .  The first post of this series is about how to write a good Twitter profile . How should I choose my handle? When we set up a Twitter profile, the first step is choosing a handle. A Twitter handle is the username that appears at the end of your unique Twitter URL and below your name. Twitter handles must contain fewer than 15 characters Twitter handles should be as simple and memorable as possible; for this reason, using  name and surname  is usually the best choic...