Social media: A tool for introverts
5 September 2017 11 Comments
Sarah Hayes is an historical archaeologist who researches quality of life and social mobility in 19th-century Victoria through the lives, homes and rubbish of everyday people.
She has worked on two previous Australian Research Council projects, as a tutor, in consulting archaeology and in the management of moveable heritage in the museum and cultural heritage contexts.
She is currently an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) recipient in Archaeology at La Trobe University.
Sarah tweets from @SarahHResearch, has a Facebook page Sarah Hayes – Historical Archeologist, and is on Instagram as historyfromthings. Her ORCID is 0000-0002-2144-3754.
Image collage courtesy of Sarah Hayes.
My very first post on my Facebook page was seen by 130 or so people. I was in a cold sweat. This was terrifying. What if I spelled something wrong?
At first, I really wasn’t sure that the discomfort was worth it and I rather wanted to hide.
But, since taking up a DECRA award and effectively being employed by taxpayers, I felt that I couldn’t continue my research in a little academic bubble.
I knew I wanted to be able to tell more people about my research and, I suspected, this would in turn improve my research. I broadened my research communication strategies overall, and have even presented in a pub!
Audience
So, after attending some very useful social media training, I dutifully set up a Twitter account and Facebook page. The Twitter account was easy enough, but the Facebook side of things took some thought. I didn’t want to mix up photos of my kids in my existing account with posts about archaeology.
I’ve had a personal Facebook page for maybe 8 years, but rarely used it. In hindsight, I could have used my existing account and the post privacy settings to keep private posts private. But what I did was set up a dedicated page for my work stuff and it is kind of neat and tidy having a separate place for work content. There are also much higher upper limits for page likes than for friends. So, when I hit 5,000 followers, it won’t be an issue (ha ha – not likely). Read more of this post
