Social Media Guide for Authors

Social Media Guide for Authors

Congratulations on the publication of your article in Health Science Inquiry!

Just like you, we want your article to be as widely read as possible. At HSI, we promote all our articles through our Twitter account, @HSInquiry, as well as on LinkedIn.

We encourage you to share your article with colleagues, mentors, family and friends, on social media, and through any other channels you are comfortable with. Often a personal message from the article’s author goes a long way in drawing attention to the article and highlighting its value.

General Suggestions

Regardless of where you choose to share your article, consider the following:

  • Distill the essential message or finding of your article into clear, concise language. Your purpose, results, and conclusion are good starting points for finding content to include in your social media posts.
  • Include the DOI link to the article with your message. Including the DOI, rather than the URL to the URL to the article or a link to the PDF will allow Altmetrics to track how the article is shared on social media.
  • Ask your organization, key colleagues and peers in your field to share your article.
  • Include visual content (e.g. an image or short video) with your post. Research shows that social media posts including images and video attract more attention than posts without visual content. Consider accompanying your post with either a picture of yourself, a screenshot of your published article, an image related to your article, or an animated .gif. Sites like Pixabay and Unsplash contain many Creative Commons and royalty-free images. If you would like to further increase engagement, include a short video introducing yourself and your findings.

Tips for Twitter

Twitter has become a hub of knowledge translation for academics and scientists. If you have your own Twitter account:

  • Tweet a short post about your article. Include a link to the article DOI.
  • Tag our Twitter account handle (@HSInquiry) in your post. By including @HSInquiry in your tweet, we will be notified of your post and can then engage with your tweet. 
  • Tag any other relevant Twitter account handles in your post. This could include the handles of any co-authors, the Twitter accounts for your places of work or study, and any other peers or colleagues you think would like to be notified of the post.  
  • Include relevant hashtags in your post. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the pound symbol (#). To make a phrase into a hashtag, remove the space between the words (e.g. #HealthScience). Hashtags are used similarly to the keywords you include with your article abstract and allow other Twitter users to find tweets on common themes. If you’re unsure whether to hashtag a particular word in your post, search for the hashtag on Twitter to see how it is used.  
  • Integrate account handles and hashtags into the text of your post. If it makes sense within the context of your tweet, replace words and names with account handles and hashtags (e.g. Check out this new article I wrote with @HlthSciGirl on current trends in #HealthScienceResearch). If you’re unable to seamlessly integrate handles and hashtags into the body of your post, include them at the end.  
  • Capitalize each word in a hashtag or account name. While capitalization will not impact how an account is tagged or how a hashtag is searched, capitalizing each word in a  multi-word hashtag or account name -- known as camel case -- will allow screen readers to decipher each word separately, rather than reading the string as one long  incoherent word (e.g. #HealthSciences instead of #healthsciences)  
  • Make images accessible by including an image description. If you include an image with your post, follow these instructions to add an image description that will be readable by a screen-reader.  

Other Promotional Channels

  • Facebook: If you have a Facebook account, consider sharing the DOI link to your article either as a status update on your homepage, or post about your article on relevant group pages.
  • LinkedIn: If you have a LinkedIn account, consider writing a status update announcing the publication of the article with the DOI link, as well as adding your article to the Publications section of your profile.
  • Blog: If you have a blog, consider writing a short blog post (750-1500 words) summarizing your article findings and including a DOI link to the full article. If you don’t have a personal blog, consider sharing the post on your organization’s blog.
  • Email Signature: Consider including the DOI link to the article in your personal or work email signature. This is an easy way to notify your colleagues and friends of your article’s publication.

 

Adapted from Partnership Journal