5 Strategies for using social media to promote your writing

The purpose of using social media as an academic is to do more than spread the word, it is also a way to develop readers and relationships, said Janet Salmons, an independent researcher, writer and consultant with Vision2Lead, Inc., in a TAA webinar entitled, “Six Strategies for Using Social Media to Promote Your Writing.”

“What’s unique about the social media networking environment is the ability to find groups of people of like mind and interact with people and get their perspectives and engage with them because they are able to produce content as well,” she said.

Join us 1/25 for the TAA webinar, ‘Six Strategies for Using Social Media to Promote Your Writing’

You can spend (and waste!) a lot of time on blogs and social media. Be strategic and use these tools to complement your academic writing, textbook authoring, and related consulting services.

Join us  p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Six Strategies for Using Social Media to Promote Your Writing,” when writer and blogger Janet Salmons will share six ways you can use blogs and social media, including: developing credibility, building a network, reaching new readers, sharing resources, encouraging textbook adoption, and disseminating findings outside of academia. She will help you evaluate whether you should start your own blog, page, or group, or contribute as a guest.

Why textbook & academic authors should make time for Twitter

Of the major social media platforms, Twitter is, in my opinion, the most effective for wordsmiths like textbook and academic authors. The 140-character constraint on tweets—the messages one posts on Twitter—turns out to be rather freeing: the site rewards concision and encourages straightforwardness.

Specialists like textbook and academic authors can and should use Twitter for professional marketing purposes—to demonstrate their know-how, interface with other experts, reach readers, generate leads, generate publicity for their work, and make professional connections. All of these aims can be furthered with Twitter—it’s just a matter of tweeting intentionally.

7 Reasons academics should blog

Blogging can be an effective tool for promoting your academic works and establishing yourself as a voice of influence within your academic discipline, said Kevin Patton, author of several anatomy and physiology textbooks including the 2016 Textbook Excellence Award-winning Anatomy & Physiology 9e.

“A blog provides a virtual ‘home base’ to share information about your writing, teaching, and academic interests,” he said. “It provides you an effective outreach tool to network with your peers and students, and allows you to tailor your messages to the specific audience you wish to reach.”

8 Academic blogging questions answered by veteran blogger Mark Leccese

There are various benefits academics can reap from blogging. Mark Leccese, author of The Elements of Blogging: Expanding the Conversation of Journalism and the blog The Elements of Blogging, shared many of those benefits with TAA members in his webinar, Blogging for Academics: A Journalist Turned Academic Offers Tips, Techniques, Inspiration and a Few Warnings. What perhaps is even more valuable is what Leccese shared in regards to how academics can reap those benefits. Below you’ll find his answers to eight pressing questions academics have in on blogging.