How to use Twitter to grow your scientific network, learn something new and have fun on the way?
Courtney’s motivation to use Twitter
- Getting in touch with the scientific community beyond her own lab and project
- Getting new ideas, learn about latest papers
Getting started:
- Passive engagement, see what other people tweet about
- Figure out whether that is something you would also like to tweet about – or maybe not and define the person you would like to be on twitter
- Start tweeting about events you attend. That might feel less scary than providing content from scratch – this may calm your nerves and might make you realise that it’s not that scary
- If you are in the lab, you could tweet about a method you are trying – maybe (likely) somebody else has either tried that method before and might share useful tips or hasn’t used the method before but would be interested in learning from you, how it works
Benefits:
- Provide others with useful infos and received infos yourself be it about papers or events by asking questions or by following and engaging in discussions
- Job offers 😀
- Opportunity to broaden one’s own perspectives
- The feeling of being part of a community
Downsides:
- Negative or aggressive responds but it’s easy to stay out of that and the science community usually is less aggressive from Courtney’s experience
- Over positivity: seeing everybody’s achievements can be encouraging and nice to see but can also make one feel behind and underachieving. It is important here to always recognise own achievements and try not to compare yourself with everything you are seeing
- Over negativity: when people complain a lot about being a young researcher, how difficult it is to be a PhD and to stay in academia
Extra remark:
Find the people, who will make your time on twitter useful for you!
If you would like to connect with Courtney you can find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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