Brittany Trinh returns to The Social Academic featured interview series. We talk about how her thinking on websites for professors, scientists, and researchers has changed. We also talk about how her life has changed now that she’s back in grad school (and what that means for her online presence). Plus, hear about our Team VIP Day service for research lab websites. Read Brittany’s bio.
In this interview
Meet Brittany
Jennifer: Hi everyone. It is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic. I’m here today with my friend and one of my business partners, Brittany Trinh. We’re talking about personal academic websites, research lab websites, websites for academics. Brittany, would you say hi and introduce yourself? Or, reintroduce yourself since you’ve already been a guest on our show?
Brittany: Hi everyone. My name is Brittany Trinh. Yeah, I feel like the last time I was on your show was maybe in like 2020 or something like that. It was a while ago.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness. It’s been that long and we’ve been friends ever since. I mean, Brittany, you were at my wedding this summer. I can’t believe how time has flown by and your life has changed. You’re back in grad school. Tell me about that.
Brittany: Yeah, so I was working and running my side business as a website designer at the time when we’ve met. Since then, I had started grad school in 2021. I am now a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Jennifer: Amazing. I really like how you reached out and introduced yourself to me in the very beginning. I felt like there wasn’t a need to be in competition with each other. It was so nice to be able to have someone to talk with about something that we both care about, which is having an online presence when you’re a scientist or someone who’s in academia. And also, we’ve been able to work together and partner together on some fun projects.
Brittany: When I first started getting in the online space and I heard about you. When I saw you at first, I was kind of thinking like, “Oh, we are kind of competitors in a sense that we have similar services” and things like that. But after I thought about it and kind of learned more about the space, I figured at that time we had slightly different audiences. You were still more targeting professors and people who were further along, whereas I was trying to target with graduate students and earlier career. But obviously since starting grad school, a lot of my side business web design stuff has kind of been put on the back burner. I’m still kind of working on it here and there, and I love collaborating with you as of late. So that has been a really good kind of easing back into the web design business.
Jennifer: That’s really fun. And I love hearing about your grad school experiences on social media. What was it like to start sharing that part of your new lifestyle in your online space that was kind of different from how you were showing up before?
Brittany: When I was showing up before, I was mostly just sharing a lot of tips and information on Twitter at the time. That worked for some time. But once I got to grad school, I thought, first of all, I don’t want to just be known for websites anymore. But I also had to take a break because I wasn’t really sure about my scientific identity yet because I just started grad school, and even though I had worked in industry for some time, starting grad school made me feel like a beginner again. And actually it took me probably the last three-ish years or so to finally feel a little bit more confident about posting things on social media regarding grad school.
Because for me personally, I just didn’t really want to be just a PhD influencer. There’s a lot of PhD influencers. I follow them too because I like their contents motivating and things like that, of course. But there’s just certain aspects of it that I didn’t really align with. And, I didn’t want to create that type of content. It took me a really long time up until maybe last year to finally figure out, “Oh, actually I still do want to talk about some things about grad school and about being a scientist, being in STEM and all that. But it just looks a little bit different than how a lot of people are currently doing it.” That’s because a lot of people are also science communicators, so they’re communicating their research, which is great. But for me personally, that wasn’t exactly something that I wanted to do.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s so interesting because the way that I see websites is part of science communication. At least for scientists, it’s a way to communicate who they are and what they’re doing. And that’s something you’re so great at. It’s totally okay that it’s not an interest of yours when it comes to the other areas of your life. That’s so interesting to me. I’m curious if you’re open to it, would you share with me what aspect of influencer life maybe didn’t appeal to you? Because there may be people who are listening to this who are considering the same thing and hearing your thoughts might be really helpful for them.
Brittany: Yeah, I guess for me, a lot of it was just hearing the over romanticizing the lifestyle was one thing that I wasn’t really a fan of, especially without context. I love the aesthetic. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with study aesthetic and everything. So, I get it. It’s very appealing to see that type of content. But I think that when you create that type of content and you share that without sharing the context in which a PhD program happens. I guess what goes on in a PhD program, it can be a bit deceiving to say the least, or just a little bit. I don’t know what the right word is, but I just didn’t feel like that’s something I wanted to do. I think that it’s a good thing that they’re inspiring younger people or anybody who wants to pursue a PhD. I think that’s good to be a source of inspiration. But I think that for me, I didn’t want it to just be an aesthetic look like a lifestyle.
Jennifer: Yeah, I absolutely understand that. And what’s interesting to me is that if I came across your channel and didn’t know that you didn’t want to be an influencer, I would think that you’re quite realist in what you share about your PhD life. And, you even have a podcast about what it’s like to be in grad school. I think that there’s a difference between influencer in terms of the intention of creating partnerships and brand deals and maybe even gaining a certain type of following for being an influencer in that space. And then also just having influence over a space because you are more open about sharing your story. And I think that your openness is really refreshing because you do share maybe some of the negative experiences too, some of the struggles and some of the highlights. It feels very real every time I check out your social media stories. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s so refreshing for me. What was that like for you to decide to actually start posting about these things?
Brittany: That was kind of hard, actually. For the first two years, I think the way I described it to people was that I felt like I was kind of ‘in a shell.’ I was very withdrawn because a lot of my PhD struggles took up a lot of my mental capacity. I just really didn’t have the desire at all to show up and to be seen, and honestly, to be that vulnerable to so many people online and to show them I’m struggling. Because a lot of people, again, like I mentioned, were set up the aesthetic. Everyone looks like, “Oh, they’re having such a good time in their PhD, they’re accomplishing so much. Why don’t I feel that way? Why am I not doing X, Y, Z?”
What I realized recently was that I guess I could go through those times, but I didn’t have to share it in real time. I can still share it now, which is what I’m learning to do right now, which is part of this project I’m working on for my podcast. I’m trying to write a series or make it episode, whatever series of episodes of all the different struggles I’ve kind of gone through. And sharing my thought process through that and what I did, what I wish I did differently, so that hopefully people who listen to the podcast or future people who encounter the podcast can learn from it. And can see, I wouldn’t say the bad side of things, but just these are things that people don’t want to openly talk about. And I think that it does take time to get over it so that you have fully processed it in a way that you can talk about it in a more meaningful way than just, I guess venting about it. Because I never really want to come off that way, even though in real life in the moment, I’m just like, “Oh my God, this was so stressful. Why are things like this?”
But when I talk to other people, younger students and things like that, I have to actively reframe it in my mind. How do I make this useful or helpful to them? Or what can I take away from it? How can I improve through this experience? Which has been happening a lot recently.
Jennifer: You’ve been doing more mentoring yourself, haven’t you?
Brittany: Yeah, a lot of mentoring in terms of in the lab. I’ve had four undergrads so far, and I have two right now. And then I also do some mentoring for first year students. So when they come in, they have a lot of questions about how do I join a group? How do I talk to a professor? Which group should I join and what are things I should look out for and stuff like that. Whenever I give advice, I always preface it with, this was my experience, because I never want to come off as I know everything. I’m just being like, I’m just sharing my experience, and you can take away what you want to take away from it. Honestly, I feel like that’s the same approach I have for my podcast as well.
Beyond Your Science, a podcast for grad students and early career scientists
Jennifer: So who should subscribe to your podcast? What’s it called, and where can people find it?
Brittany: My podcast is called Beyond Your Science. It’s available on Apple Podcast and Spotify. It’s really for any graduate student or early career scientist who wants to explore the intersection between science, creativity, and entrepreneurship. And so those are some of the core pillars I talk about on my podcast. Grad school is just a part of it for now just because I’m in it, but that’s not giving advice on how to get into grad school or anything. One thing I really would love to focus on more in the future is kind of small businesses in STEM, just because I think that’s a really niche area that we don’t really hear a lot about when we’re in grad school. In grad school, we hear about becoming a professor or going to industry, and we also actually hear a lot about people going into startups and entrepreneurship and stuff.
But at least on the grad school level, I haven’t really heard a lot about people choosing a small business route after grad school. But because of getting to know so many academics on online over the years and seeing where they’ve gone, a lot of them have started their own businesses and things like that because of the flexibility, the freedom to do what they would like to pursue their own ideas. I think those are all things that we as graduate students, we really value. And so I kind of want to show more people that this is a possibility for you if you could consider it. Yeah.
How Brittany’s thinking about academic websites has changed
Jennifer: Oh, that’s so cool. That’s really exciting for me to hear. And that’s kind of the first time I’m hearing about this too. So I love that you shared that. Now, I’m curious, how has your thinking about websites changed since our last interview? It’s been a while. I know we’ve worked on websites together. Overall, how has maybe your thinking changed over time?
Brittany: Oh my God, that’s such a good question because let me tell you, when I first started, I had just gotten out of undergrad and I was starting my job. I was trying to convince grad students to create websites for their work. And at the time when I started four years ago before coming to grad school, I was just really baffled. I was like, why don’t you want to create websites for your work? Why aren’t you proud of your work? Because you’re doing cool stuff and you’re super qualified. But no amount of me encouraging them could really get them to change anything. So I would just be like, “Oh, well, whenever you’re ready, this information is here for you.” But now that I became a grad student, I understand why.
Jennifer: Oh, wait, wait. Tell me a couple of reasons why. Because there’s definitely grad students listening to this that are like, ‘I think that might be me.’
Brittany: Yeah. Okay. Because I have my website and my website has all my website design stuff, my podcast stuff. But for the longest time, I didn’t really want to talk about my research at all. I didn’t want to share it with people.
Jennifer: What’s your research on?
Brittany: My research is focused on polymer chemistry specifically. Right now, I’m learning or developing a method to make more make up this polymerization more environmentally friendly. Before that, I was learning about how polymers can be made stronger and tougher for high impact materials, aerospace equipment, military equipment, things like that. So I’m just really interested in polymers and how their mechanical properties are useful. But now, right now I’m mostly focusing on how to synthesize polymers in a more eco-friendly way.
Jennifer: I love that! And I love the environment, so that’s my favorite. What about that felt like you wanted to hold it back or hold that part of yourself back from sharing on your website, and have you shared it?
Brittany: I think it was because I just didn’t really have the tangible result to show: because I didn’t have a paper. I still don’t have a paper. I’m a fourth year student PhD candidate. I have no papers. It just reminded me of that Pride and Prejudice quote, “I’m 27 years old and I have no prospects.”
Jennifer: I love it. We’re both readers. We both love classical music. Brittany and I are good friends, and there’s so many reasons why.
Brittany: But seriously, that’s the reason why I feel so, I don’t want to say ashamed, but just a little bit hesitant to be like, ‘This is my research.” I haven’t published anywhere. I maybe presented at a conference, but that work is unpublished and I don’t know if that will be published anytime soon. All those reasons combined. Plus, just the way that just by the nature of the PhD experience. I just naturally feel more inadequate than before. Imposter syndrome, right? All those reasons combined makes me not want to own up to it. I guess at least professionally, it’s easy for me to just say, “I’m a Graduate Research Assistant, because that’s what I am on paper. But to be like, “I’m a scientist.” I don’t really know about that.
Jennifer: It feels like a stretch, even though that’s not true. You’re mentoring future scientists already [laughing].
Brittany: I’m doing science, more science than a normal person does. Even if I don’t feel that that way, I am already doing it. That’s kind of what I had to tell myself. Yeah.
Jennifer: So did you put it on your website?
Brittany: I finally did put it on my website.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness.
Brittany: Yeah, because I was like, oh, my bio has nothing about chemistry. So it’s just in my bio, it’s like a little blurb. It says, Brittany is a PhD candidate in chemistry. Her research focuses on synthesizing high impact polymers in a more eco-friendly way and leveraging their tough mechanical properties into industrial applications.
It was really hard to condense what I do into a couple of words that are easy to understand. On one hand, it felt like I was oversimplifying, but on the other hand, I was like, I’m not going to go into the details. If someone was really interested, they could ask. But that was also really hard because I was like, it makes it sound like what I do sounds really, I don’t know, noble and great? But I don’t feel that way on the day to day. You know what I mean? At least I assume a lot of graduate students probably feel some type of way about their research.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness. Professors feel that kind of way about their research. Let me tell you, that feeling of being unsure about how you’re talking about your research and the things you care about most? That doesn’t go away when you become a mid-career researcher or a senior researcher, and you might even struggle to talk about it the way that you feel when you’re retired. So I think that it’s something many people struggle with it. And I love that you shared what you wrote with us because it sounded great.
Brittany: Yeah. I used your tips from a previous podcast interview, I think with Dr. Echo Rivera.
Jennifer: Ooh. For anyone who is listening, we do talk about how to write an amazing conference speaker bio. That’s great for academics writing any kind of bio. So I hope you’ll check that out.
Updating her personal website
Jennifer: Now, your online presence has changed as your new life experiences and goals have popped up. One of the things that you did was redoing your website, and you just talked about adding in that bio. What prompted you to want to redo your website? I know as a website designer myself, that’s a project I’ve been putting off for so long. I need to do it. So what prompted you to do it?
Brittany: Yeah. For the longest time, I had started with all my services about website design or workshops about website design. And then as I was realizing I don’t really have the capacity to do this anymore, I started making those pages hidden. I didn’t want to highlight that anymore. And then just throughout grad school, I realized I don’t really know if I want to just leave it open for website design right now. So I kind of want to just make it very clear that I’m trying to build my personal brand instead. That my personal brand still includes website design tips, but that I’m not actively soliciting new clients.
And I think that has really helped because now on my website, it’s just me featuring my podcast, which is my main mode of sharing and building my personal brand through the podcast and also LinkedIn newsletter. Then also kind of just repackaging some of the things I already had, some of the resources I had so that it’s still useful to people, but it’s more organized. I finally did that a couple months ago. And I also did a podcast episode where I talked about the process of me deciding to do that. But again, it was also something that I had put off for the longest time too. Because school, life, all the other things that come first.
Jennifer: Exactly. Sometimes we have to prioritize all the other things, and it’s okay to put off the thing with your online presence as long as you need to. I love that Brittany made that list because what she was ready, she knew what she wanted to do.
Best Personal Academic Websites Contest returns in 2025
Jennifer: Now we have done, since we last did our interview, two annual Best Personal Academic Website Contests. It was so fun to be able to share some amazing websites from grad students, postdocs, early career researchers, people who were in research labs. Oh my goodness. There were just so many people who were curious to submit to this contest. Would you be open to doing another one with me next year? What do you think?
Brittany: Yeah, I love doing it. I love seeing how people show their research, show themselves through their websites. It’s very interesting to see how people interpret also website tips and then implement it on their website too. And I think also because we do it with Owlstown. Owlstown is [a website builder] made for academics. I think it’s really fun to see how people still are able to customize it to their own needs.
Jennifer: Brittany and I are both designers, and so we’re thinking about every little detail, but for so many people, all you need is a website. And it is totally amazing that Dr. Ian Li has created Owlstown, a free academic website builder that you can easily make your website in. What is it? Like 15 minutes? I mean, it’s really fast. We did it on that call.
Brittany: Yeah, it’s very fill in the blank type of [website design]. That’s what I told this to the grad students in my department too. I was like, if you guys need a website, just use this. It’s so fast and easy. You don’t need to think about the design.
Jennifer: Even if you do eventually want that fully designed website in the future, if you know it’s not on your list this year or next, I mean make an Owlstown website, it will create a stronger online presence for you like today.
Brittany: Yeah. And I also met Ian, around the same time I met you or reached out to him around the same time. I also had to test it out for myself before I recommended it to people. When I tested it out, it was in its early stages, and even in its early stages, I was like, wow, this is really good. And then over time, he started developing more features and things and I was like, sold. This is so good now.
Jennifer: Right? I love how responsive he is. If you have a question about it or a suggestion, some kind of feature that you want to see, if he thinks it’ll help people, he’ll try and make that feature happen. It’s so cool.
Jennifer: Now, research lab and group websites, that is something we’ve been teaming up on for VIP days where professors get a done-for-you website in one day. I mean, seriously, we gather the materials in advance. We have a Planning Meeting. We talk about things like website aesthetics and colors and stuff and what you want. But then Brittany and I, and my husband, Matthew, we team up, we create the website for you in just one day. Oh my goodness. Brittany teaming up with you on this has been amazing. It’s been so transformative. I’m honestly shocked by how much we’ve been able to get done in one day.
Brittany: Yeah, me too. I think it’s really nice to work in a team like this because before I had just been working on my own. I think the workflow of gathering all the content beforehand helps so much. Because then you know what needs to go on the page, and it just makes everything go by so much faster.
Jennifer: Exactly. Now we can totally work together. If you’re looking for that bigger done-for-you research lab website [Strategic Website Design service]. Brittany, and I may still be able to help with that, but Team Website VIP days is what I recommend for most research labs, especially if this is going to be your first website. It’s not like a redesign. So we only have a couple days left in 2024, but please reach out about the new year. We would love to work with you and help your research lab or group. Brittany, what should people know about their research lab website or group website? Do they need one? Who should consider this kind of service?
Brittany: If you are a professor who’s actively recruiting students, you definitely need a website. I remember even when I was looking for groups and such, or even students now when they’re coming in and they’re looking at professors, they check the website. They go and see when was it last updated? Are students graduating? Is your group still active? Because the student is trying to prepare as much as they can to know about the professor so that when they meet the professor, they can talk about the research or ask about active projects and how they can get involved. Or, talk about what skills they bring to the table and things like that. But it’s going to be kind of hard for them to do that if there’s no website. Or, if you just have a very broad research statement on your faculty page or something.
The other thing is that students may be interested in the general area of research, but they may not know exactly what the research work entails. Maybe some people will be like, “Oh, just read the papers.” But in all honesty, a lot of students when they’re coming in, they’re very overwhelmed with enrolling in classes, teaching classes, looking for a group, acclimating to their new city. Trying to also parse out which papers are relevant to current projects at the moment is also very difficult. I really advocate for professors to have this on their website: a very clear or recently updated Projects page with publications that are most relevant or recent so that the student can easily pick out. “Okay, let me read the update on this and see where, what they’re doing right now, where could I fit in,” and things like that. So definitely professors of any age that wants to get students interested in their work. And, especially younger professors. I think now a lot of younger professors are, they’re trying to build a personal brand and everything in addition to the research.
Jennifer: This is a great use of startup funds. You can pay with your university monies. So please don’t hesitate to reach out if you are interested in having a VIP Day website for your research group or lab.
Jennifer: Brittany has been so much fun to have you back on The Social Academic podcast. Is there anything you’d like to chat about or add before we wrap up?
Brittany: No, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed working on the VIP days with you because it lets me still be a part of the helping academics with their websites, but kind of more on the back end of things. That just helps me as a graduate student right now because I’m just not able to do the front facing stuff at the moment.
Jennifer: Yeah, we’re perfect partners on this. And Dr. Makella Coudray, whose research lab website we did recently. We just had a workshop with her research group and she said that she now feels like her online presence is a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a 10, and her website is a huge part of that. It makes her feel really good about her research and it makes her lab really excited to help share it. So I’m just so proud of the work that we’ve been able to do together so far, and excited for all the work to come.
Brittany: Yeah, me too.
Jennifer: Brittany, thank you so much for coming on today’s show.
Brittany Trinh is a Vietnamese-American website designer and chemist. She helps enterprising scientists, science communicators, and academic entrepreneurs create a website that integrates your creativity and expertise. Brittany knows when your website reflects the awesome things you do within and beyond STEM, it helps you forge your own path.
She hosts the Beyond Your Science Podcast, where she talks about integrating science, entrepreneurship, and creativity within and beyond STEM, from her own experiences and interviews with other scientists and small-business owners. Listen to the Beyond Your Science Podcast.
Brittany is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on synthesizing high-impact polymers in a more eco-friendly way and leveraging their tough mechanical properties into industrial applications. She received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Psychology from the University of Houston. Follow her research on Google Scholar.
When she’s not in the lab, she’s probably playing piano or violin, watching slice-of-life anime, or cooking some kind of noodle.
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
The next ideas are for things you can do while the event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
I love virtual events. Maybe you do too. But it’s okay if you don’t. As my guest on The Social Academic, Dr. Julia Barzyk said, “research is becoming virtual first.” Virtual events are here to stay when it comes to academics and researchers.
Your online presence can enhance how you experience and interact with people at conferences and events. This is true for both in person and virtual events. But today, I want to chat with you about what to do for your online presence when you’re attending or presenting virtually. In this blog post:
Tell people you’re attending the virtual conference or event
Sometimes, professors hesitate to tell people you’re going to a conference or event because it feels self-promotional.
But, actually, when you share you’re headed to an event (even when it’s virtual), you help a lot of people. You can help your
Colleagues
Students
event organizers
Speakers
There are also people who are anxious to join the conversation. Conference attendees sometimes wait for someone, anyone else to use the conference hashtag on social media first. I get that. It can be hard to start a conversation.
When you think about the people you have the potential to help? Thinking about those people helps the time I’ve put into crafting a post be a lot more meaningful. My professor clients have found that’s true for them too.
Here are a few places you can share you’re headed to a virtual event:
Social media
Your website
Mentioning in person
Tip: The most dynamic way you can improve your online presence and your presence at any event you’re presenting at is by improving your speaker bio.
Watch my video on speaker bios with Dr. Echo Rivera
Share about the specific talks you’re presenting or attending
When you share the talk you’re presenting specifically, it helps people know if they can attend. If they can attend (or even if they can’t), it helps people share the event with others who may be interested. Like their grad students.
Sometimes conference programs are hundreds of pages and multiple days, with concurrent sessions to choose from. I love that virtual events tend to come with options to plan your schedule in advance.
Let’s say you share your talk on social media too. And, you use the conference hashtag. Only a small percentage of the people presenting are using the conference hashtags (or posting about their talk at all). Already it’s more likely you’ll get eyes on your event.
When you share the details people need to know if the talk is right for them, things like
What your session is about
The time and date you’re presenting at
Where people can find more info
It makes a huge difference for people to have ease when learning about your particular event. Some professors make a graphic on Canva, but virtual events tend to create graphics for you. So it’s a good idea to log into the conference platform early to see if there’s a visual way for you to enhance your social media post about your talk. It’s also worth asking the conference hosts if that’s something they plan on having to avoid unnecessary labor (unless you love graphic design, in which case yay!).
I’ve also worked with a lot of professors who host or moderate events. Sometimes they have multiple events and presentations at the same conference over several days. There’s an inclination to not share their own thing, so it’s okay if you find comfort in sharing the thing you’re hosting instead. It makes a big difference for the panelists or speakers at your event.
The truth is, people often wait to share about themselves until the last minute (if they ever do). I think that’s often because of either imposter syndrome or time. As a host, you care about this. And you can help make it easy for the speakers at your event to share with ease when you tag them. It’s much easier to repost than to craft it themselves.
Tips for your social media post reach the right people
Use the conference hashtag using #CamelCase where you capitalize the first letters of each word
Use up to 1 other hashtag related to your field at the end of your post
When you have a link where people can learn more info about your talk or event, please know that most social media algorithms downgrade how many people it shows your post to when you include a link in your post. When you have a link to share, one way to do that is by including the link in the comments or replies of your post. For Twitter/X, you can include the link in a thread.
At virtual events, connecting with people in ways that are lasting can actually be easier. That’s because virtual events have virtual platforms where you can have a profile, get a link to click on to find someone’s social media or website, or download their slides/resources. Virtual events may have networking sessions, pre or post events, and ways for you to stay involved.
Most virtual events have a space for you to create a profile. Your profile helps people see you and get to know who you are. And when you update your profile early (like when access to them opens), you give people opportunity to learn about you as they’re updating their own profile.
One way to connect with people in advance is by adding an invitation in your bio. For example:
Adding a scheduling link and inviting people to meet you for coffee
Adding your email and inviting people to contact you if they are interesting in collaborating or networking
Some conferences have space for you to create your own virtual event (like a hangout with a shared topic of conversation).
There are also asynchronous ways to feel like you’re part of the community. For instance, the option to ask a Question to all attendees, or to create a poll. Some virtual conferences have games you can participate in. Or a scavenger hunt.
I love that virtual events can often create better environments to communicate with speakers as compared to in person conferences. When you’re in person, you have what, 10 minutes before your next session starts? Virtual allows for asynchronous options, giving you opportunity to ask questions to speakers before their session (even when you can’t make it live). There’s even space for speakers to upload resources and share links for you to take home.
When their session has ended, the chat space often stays so people can engage in conversations when watching the replay. And actually, don’t wait for someone else to do it first. If you’re at a virtual even and you see that no one has said anything in the chat (after the event has ended), you can start by thanking the speaker. You can build meaningful relationships with people virtually even when you don’t have a specific conversation or feel unsure of what to say at the moment. Every relationship doesn’t need to be built on something “big” or “deep” or “collaborative.” Do what feels natural.
Virtual events allow us to have more control, even when it comes to our schedule. I love the flexibility and accessibility they create for academics and researchers. And I know that for some people they’re maybe not your cup of tea. And that’s okay.
Whether you prefer virtual or in person events, there are ways for you to connect with people in meaningful ways online. And there are ways you can have agency with your online presence to help the people at that conference better know who you are and what you care about.
Your online presence is a great way to share your research, teaching, and academic life. To find collaborators and make lasting connections. And I want that for you, if it’s something you’re curious about for yourself.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what your online presence should look like as a professor. And it stops people from feeling confident or comfortable showing up online, even when you know a strong online presence aligns with your goals.
Your online presence creates a legacy for your work and supports your professional goals for your research, teaching, and leadership. And yes, you probably have been putting it at the bottom of your to-do list… Join us and let’s change that!
This Q&A was hosted by Ana Pineda, PhD, of I Focus And Write on October 10, 2024.
Introduction
Ana: This happens a lot to me too. Just quickly for the rest of us watching the recording. I started the recording a bit late, but I was introducing you to Jennifer Van Alstyne, and she’s the expert on having an online presence, not only academic, but personal branding, especially for academics. Although I think your profile goes much further and you all should start following her, and I will send you some links later for her social media, her channels, her website.
I discovered [Jennifer] very early on in this business and something that I hope we are going to speak more about it, I was struggling with my, my online presence as an academic and also as a business. I thought, “Ah, Jennifer one day she, she should come and tell us more. I teach you, this is something I encourage you all when you want to connect with someone, send them an email, send them a message in social media, tell them what you would like to maybe have a coffee with them or organize something with them. And that’s it. This is how Jennifer and I contacted and now she’s here talking with all of you and I’m super excited. Thank you. Jennifer, do you want to tell us a bit about you to start?
Jennifer: Hi everyone. I’m so happy to be here and to talk with you all. Let’s see, I have been helping professors one-on-one with their online presence since 2018. And it really started off as, as thinking that I would help with websites specifically, but most of my clients needed help with more than just their website because being online isn’t just about having a website. You can actually be online without a website, too. And so really figuring out online presence wasn’t a one size fits all solution. A website wasn’t going to be the answer for everyone helped me evolve my business over time.
Now, it’s been like, what, six and a half years and I help people with websites, social media, and bio writing. And really I’d say our work is about confidence. Our work is about the confidence to be able to show up and to feel like you’re worthy enough, and that you deserve space online. I love getting to help people with that.
Ana: Oh, so nice. And I love that you linked to, to this, to the aspect of feeling confident because I was telling to Jennifer like, I think 90% of my audience, of you here, of our students suffer severe imposter syndrome, and this feeling that we are not good enough. And I see that for me, but also probably for many of you that here, this stops us from showing up online and sharing our words. We always feel, I sent an email today with some of those thoughts. The, “who am I to say this on LinkedIn,” or, “am I bragging if I’m sharing this paper that got published.” Something also like, “What is this person going to think when it says that I post this,” right? Something some of my students say is I think on that teacher I had once or something a supervisor said that you had 10 years ago. Sometimes you still have these thoughts of, “What is this specific person going to think? And this stops us. It truly stops us. I hope that also for all of you that you live with some ideas of how to stop these imposter thoughts when it comes to your online presence today. Love it. So for today, it’s a, Jennifer told me, I love interactive sessions and we need your help. Please, we need your help for the, of course I have questions here ready for Jennifer, but we would love to hear your questions.
Jennifer: I have a question if that’s okay for everyone who’s listening. This is one of the questions that I, I like to ask people when we start working together because it really is different for everyone, no matter where you are on feeling imposter syndrome, no matter where you are in your career.
How you feel about your online presence is, is very internal. It’s very personal. So I’m curious if 0 is like, “I don’t have an online presence at all,” and 10 is like, “I have a great online presence, I’m really confident in it. It’s the exact online presence I want.” Where are you on that range? From like zero of no online presence at all to 10, amazing online presence.
How would you rate yourself? 4, 2, 3. Yeah. Quite low. Good. This is very, very normal. Very normal to feel like maybe there’s a lot more you could do or maybe want to do to have a stronger online presence.
I’m curious, those of you who feel like you’re on the really lower end of the scale, 0, 1, 2, 3, I’m curious, have you done something for your online presence already or is this like, “There’s a bunch of things that I want to do that I know I’m not doing and I really don’t have an online presence at all.”
Where are you thinking when you’re at the lower numbers? Is it more about actions that I haven’t taken or actions that I’ve taken that don’t feel like enough?
‘I think I’ve tried a lot.’ Yeah. Oh my, ‘the university forces me to,’ I love that answer. For a lot of people that is perfect. Yeah. Okay.
I just wanted to show even though we’re all here and we’re all here together and there is a range for where people feel for your online presence, my hope is that by the end of this workshop you’ll feel like there’s at least one small step that you can take to improve that in a way that’s really meaningful to your life. If not more. My hope is for more, but at least one.
‘I haven’t done anything because I thought why do I have to be online?’ Well, we’ll chat about that. It’s different for different people. So, saying that you have to be online for your research, you have to be online for a job market or you have to be online for, you know, any specific reason. It’s not going to work for everyone. And finding the true reason (or reasons), it’s going to be helpful for you. Hopefully we can get closer to that today as well.
What are reasons scientists and academics should have an online presence?
Ana: Oh, I love that. And actually that is how I would like to start. So what are the main reasons, Jennifer, that you say why you should, everyone have an online presence? Maybe there are a few things that you think, oh this situation, these moments, you really need to, to work on this.
Jennifer: Well, I’ll tell you why I thought when I started people should have a stronger online presence. I really thought that if you put your publications online and you create a way to help people find them, that more people from your potentially really niche topic would be able to read them, engage with them, and share them.
And that’s true, but that’s not actually a motivating reason for the majority of people that I work with. I would say for most of the professors that I work with, they want to help more people.
They want to help more people. They want to invite opportunity for themselves, but not just any opportunity. They want to invite aligned opportunities aligned with their research, aligned with their values, aligned with what they want to be focusing their time on.
Attracting opportunities is all about finding the right people. It’s about making sure that people can see and engage with what you share. That can potentially lead to greater connection, collaboration, or a long-term working relationship. I would say it’s mostly about people and making sure that that connection is possible even when you’re not in the same space.
Ana: Oh, I love this. And actually, you know, I mainly started using as online presence, let’s say Twitter, on social media. And I don’t know if you, you also said this, but in the past there was some, they did some study and they saw that the more people tweeted about papers, than the more citations they have.
Jennifer: Yes, that is definitely true. It’s also a bit limited in how we think about it.
Ana: Yes.
Jennifer: Yes, more people will see your paper when you share it online. The question is, is it the right people? Is it the right timing? Are they still going to see it after your one post?
There’s so many ways that we can share publications, really thinking about who we want it to reach and how we want to be able to help people with the hard work we’ve already done makes a really big difference for how we show up online.
So yes, always sharing your work gets more citations, gets more readers, which is great. My hope is that it’s really engaged readers, aligned readers. Readers who could potentially cite and use your work.
Jennifer: So I’ve actually gotten more narrow in my focus for who I’m hoping to reach in my work with professors.
Ana: Yes, I love that. And actually, it was later on that I think there was another paper that also, like you said, it was like, “more citations, really, but what was then the impact of this effect?” But what they saw is that the big impact in the end, like you said in people, in networking, in collaborations, in relationships. And this is really beautiful.
Lenny says here, ‘they trying to build multidisciplinary approach of a problem, building a network is the only way and networks are so important, right?’ Networks of the right people, like you said. I love that. Yeah. So good.
Why do professors want a website, social media, or blog?
Ana: And continue with the why Jennifer. I would also like to know why your clients come to you. So do they come, do they want a website? Do they want social media? Do they want blog? What is it? Tell us more please.
Jennifer: I would say most people come to me because they want, or are thinking about a website. Oftentimes it’s something that they’ve wanted for a long time. Maybe they tried to do themselves or did do themselves, but it isn’t meeting their needs.
My most popular service is like a big website plan where we either redesign or create a website that really meets their long-term needs. That takes in-depth interviews, I mean we spent about five hours talking before I even start planning the website. That’s because for a lot of people, their needs are are so nuanced. And we really get to understand what’s going to be exciting for them, what’s going to be engaging for the people that they hope their research or their teaching research reaches.
And then some people also have different areas of their life that they want to be able to share on their website. A lot of people also come to me because they want to bring together multiple identities into one personal academic website.
Or, occasionally a website that works for both your personal website and your lab website.
The website that’s right for you doesn’t necessarily look like the website that was right for someone else. That’s why professors like to work with me, cause we find that together. They feel like they don’t have to do it alone and if they don’t want to. They don’t have to touch the website themselves, they can just have it done for them.
So especially the people a bit later in their career, like to be a little bit hands off. People who are early career researchers, we get more involved and do more things together. So yeah, it’s really fun. We customize it to what best meets the professors need.
Ana: Yes, I love that also that you said it. Every need will be different, right? And I think that’s the problem with university websites, that they are very standard first and you don’t have much there to say. So actually, if you have any questions about websites right now, please share it in the chat. So maybe we can go through there.
Holly has posted a a question, Jennifer. Maybe you can read it.
Professional website vs. Academic website vs. Lab website
Jennifer: [Holly]: ‘What are the main differences between a professional website vs. an academic website?’
I’d say there, there’s not really one. I mean it’s just the label that we’ve called the website that is meant to represent you. So, if you as a person feel like your professional identity is different from your academic identity, which is true for many people, sometimes those people actually prefer two websites.
Or they prefer to focus their website on just their professional identity vs. their academic identity. When I say that, it’s more about the audience that you hope comes to the website. If you’re hoping to mostly focus on other academics and researchers, you might have academic content there even if you have a separate professional life and maybe you’re picking and choosing what goes on there. But overall, they could be the exact same website. You could have the same label for it. It’s more how you think about your own identity, if that makes sense.
Ana: And yes, jumping in the to the effort example, I find something really useful of websites that you can attract like stakeholders, right? Like people more like maybe policy makers or companies who might be interested in applying what you are working on or, or the press, right? More for science communication. Do you then recommend to have like one single website but maybe with different sections or apps? How, how do you recommend people to deal with that?
Jennifer: I always recommend one website when possible. The websites I recommend separating out are if you have a research lab where you’re going to be highlighting your team, oftentimes the professional/academic website, the personal website version of that. It makes better sense when it’s separate.
That’s not to say that a research lab website can’t support a personal identity. It’s just that the website that you may want to build out for yourself, maybe as extensive as the research lab website, but highlighting different things. I often, often recommend separate personal website and research lab website.
In terms of consulting or like a professional identity that is separate from an academic one, I often don’t recommend dividing it. Now, if you have a business that is like officially registered, you may have to divide it for like legal reasons for. Maybe for a Terms and Conditions page or a Privacy Policy that is specific to your country.
But for most people I would say that that one website works. You can have two in one. Adding a Consulting page, adding a Services page to your academic website can really enhance how people who are at NGOs, at corporations, at other universities, at federal and foundation funders. All sorts of people like publishers, people that are outside of academia, or outside of your institution will be able to better understand you and your services and your consulting. How you approach those things from the academic pages on your website as well. I don’t typically recommend splitting your identities when possible.
It’s also easier to manage one website. So less less work overall.
Stories about opportunities from your online presence
Ana: Yeah. That’s great. And actually I was wondering, do you have any win story of people after making their websites for us? We love those.
Jennifer: I’ll be really honest and say that I’m bad at keeping up with professors that I’ve worked with after the fact. But when I have, I get really delightful stories. So one of them, this is just like a few weeks after we’d launched his website and we were adding something in. We were meeting again live. He told me this funny story that he was just at a conference in his field. This was someone who was on sabbatical this year, so he wasn’t engaging as much with the research community. He was working for the federal government at the time for the year so he hadn’t been super engaged in the research community.
When he was at this conference and someone came up to him, they recognized him, like they’d seen his photo. They said, ‘I’ve explored your whole website, I learned all about you. I would like to talk with you about a job offer.’ Now my client was not job searching, he was very happy in his position. He had his next few years very planned out. But just the fact that someone knew so much about him, about the things that he cared about and brought this actually quite aligned conversation into an actual meeting space in person so soon after the website was launched was shocking.
Also, a PhD student whose dissertation was requested by a national publication. Like they wanted them to do a writeup for a national publication just a week after launch. That’s another example of opportunities that can just come essentially as soon as you have a stronger online presence.
But those are really kind of short-term things. And the long-term things that I care more about are really about how you feel about sharing what you do.
Most of the professors that come to me, no matter where they are in their career, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily imposter syndrome, but there is a feeling that people might not care. Like, you can know that your research is really good, you can know that you’re respected, you can know that you have people who care about you and still feel like there’s not someone who will care when you celebrate something that might feel small in comparison to other things. Or, that might feel big but almost too overwhelming to share.
What I like about working with professors is that by the end of our work together, there is this transformation of, “I deserve to have this space.” Like, “I deserve to take up this space and when I take up this space, it helps more people. It helps more of the people that I’m already trying to reach with my research. It helps more people and more students that I’m teaching,” find maybe the network or connection that they’re hoping to. There are ways to help far more people than just yourself with your website or with your online presence.
Ana: Yes. This is so nice. Connecting how you can help others is a big thing. And you just pointed also to the students, it is said that many of my colleagues, especially those that have websites, they’re also very popular with students who want to do their master thesis with them.
Jennifer: Yeah.
You can have a website for your teaching (even when research isn’t your focus)
Ana: And and that’s really nice, right? That you are also sharing your work and students can find their passions thanks to that too. Eh, love it. Oh, there are some questions.
Jennifer: Before we jump into questions, I just wanted to say that I’ve had clients who are very research focused with their website and I’ve had clients who are very teaching focused with their website.
And you can be both, but some people who are more teaching focused in life sometimes feel like they don’t deserve that same space online. But teaching resources are so valuable for students, for other faculty, for other graduate students or PhD students who might be starting to teach in your field.
Oftentimes when we get into those interviews about: What can we create with your website? How can it change and impact your life? We find really nuanced ways that it’s going to be meaningful for you. Whether it’s creating a Recruiting page or sharing a Student Internships list. There’s just so many options for how to talk with and connect with your students through your online presence. If you want to.
Having an online presence when your research is about sensitive topics
Ana: Yes. So nice. Yes. So there are some questions coming in. So, something that was asked, “How can we deal with being out there online when we research sensitive topics such as police violence?”
Jennifer: Ah, that’s a great question. Actually, one of the examples that we can look at today with Dr. Cheryl L. Johnson, she’s an early career researcher who works with violence and weapons and guns, especially juveniles who carry weapons.
Sensitive topics is something that makes a lot of people stop in whatever actions they’re taking to have a stronger online presence. Part of that is for self-protection. Part of that is also knowing the reactions that people might have based on what you share.
Whenever you have a sensitive topic, I really want you to think about the people that you want to help. Think about the people who really you do need to reach rather than thinking about all the people you want to avoid focusing on who needs to see your research to make that difference. That’s the introspective part that I recommend starting with.
For many of the professors I work with who have a sensitive topic, I would say that is another reason why people come to me to work together. We have found that sometimes posting on social media feels less safe. There are some spaces online that feel less safe and that maybe they don’t want to explore at this time.
Whereas having a stronger online presence, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to be on social media. And so we found what they felt and we felt together were safer options was through having their personal website and through having a LinkedIn profile that was filled out to a point where it would show up in Google quite easily and people would be able to find them based on that particular research topic online. But, they wouldn’t feel like they had to post about their topic specifically inviting potential negative reactions in order to help people find them.
If you’re someone who has a sensitive topic and you’d like to be talking about that online, I also want you to consider your safety, your personal safety, but also your emotional and mental safety and think about how you’d like to respond to things and come up with kind of like worse, like what you’re going to do in a worst case scenario. Like, let’s say you do post about a sensitive topic and it goes viral and you know, this is really bad. You’re getting, you know, messages and comments and it just feels so overwhelming. What are the steps you’re going to take at that time to make yourself feel safe to, to help yourself move past this hopefully momentary situation? Yeah.
Ana: Yes. And just for everyone also to realize that indeed in social media, people comment, but on your website you don’t need to activate any comments, eh?
Jennifer: Yes.
Ana: So that is, it’s a way of keeping yourself safe and it, so social media platforms, you can deactivate comments too, right? That nobody can comment on your posts.
Jennifer: You can, but I do want to say that deactivating comments, having, having a website, like not inviting comments doesn’t mean that you won’t get comments. People who feel really strongly about things may still email you.
Ana: Yes.
Jennifer: People will report you to your university. I just want you to know that anything you do or say online, it can be screenshotted, it can be shared, it may be reported.
This isn’t to create fear in you. It’s to let you know that universities typically do not do anything on the other end of that. They get reported to all the time and oftentimes, there’s not a lot that happens.
Ana: Okay, thank you. Thank you for that Jennifer.
When social media doesn’t feel authentic to your personal values
Ana: Now actually, you are making recommendations about social media. So indeed we have another question from Vidal: “What to do when our online presence does not feel authentic to our personal values, especially in social media, but our field is very much dependent on that?” Do you have any advice for this?
Jennifer: I wouldn’t recommend anyone be on social media unless they want to. There have been scientists and researchers for decades who have not used social media and still found connection.
But then you’d want to potentially be intentional about how you are connecting with people and keeping those long-term relationships in some other way.
I like social media because it means I can connect with those people and I can still message them or communicate with them at some point in the future, even if we haven’t talked in years. And so if you’re someone who’s open to being on social media but not posting, that could be a good way to still get that kind of interaction online.
But if it goes against your values, like I’m not going to ask you to change your values and your university shouldn’t ask you that either. In fact, universities sometimes come and ask me to do workshops and I have said no depending on what they’re asking because I won’t force any professor to accept the terms and conditions of a social media platform. You know, there are, there are some things that they just don’t agree with.
I’m also not going to force any professor to have a website if they don’t want one. I really think that it is a personal choice and there are other ways to create connection lasting networking in your field beyond social media, even if that’s the norm in your field.
Ana: Yes, thank you so much. And actually a couple of comments about that that I only realized later, right? That social media is a type of marketing, social media marketing, but it’s not the only one. Actually something very common with scientists is to do PR, public relations and speaking and going to conferences. This is also a powerful way of marketing that you are doing. I don’t know if in, if it is required for social media, but maybe what is required is to do more of this marketing. So you could also consider to, well go to conferences which are more scientific, but maybe also work more with the press in journals, interviews with the radio, maybe block platforms that publish blog posts. There are indeed, definitely there are other ways.
What is your online presence for professors and scientists?
Jennifer: Now when I say online presence, what I mean is that when someone goes to Google or another search engine, if they put in your name (or maybe your name + the area of your research), are you going to come up?
And when you do appear in search results, can they find what you hope for them to find quickly? What you hope for them to find is probably a bit about you, potentially a photo of you, contact information, your areas of research.
Now when you’re hoping to communicate with journalists in the press, you want to come up pretty high. Like you want to come up high in those search results. You want to make sure that they’re able to find you for topics that you actually want to speak about. You don’t have to have a website, you don’t have to have social media profiles in order to attract media attention. But you do have to, if you go to Google, you have to be findable with your name and also with your areas of research.
Ana: And actually I want to drop there a little tip for everyone. If you don’t have Google Scholar, activate it. Please do so because Google Scholar is from Google. So if you search your name in Google and you have a Google Scholar account, that will pop up, often quite high. And when we do this, actually if you, I hope you all know how to add Incognito window in your browser. Maybe just now do this exercise. Open an Incognito window if you know how to do it. Otherwise just open a browser window and Google your name and research and see where do you appear.
Tell us in the chat, I’m curious. Count the number of position and are you the number one, are you the number 10, you are not on the first page. We’d love to see how that is because if-
Jennifer: Yeah, let’s do that.
Ana: Yeah, if you are not high, definitely there is more there to do. But if not, indeed Google Scholar, please be sure everyone has it with a picture, it’s really with the papers that are yours because otherwise Google Scholar puts random papers. So have a, an updated Google Scholar profile. We would love to see that.
Ana: In the meantime Jennifer, we can see more of the questions that came in. Jacqueline asks, ‘Are there specific website hosts domain you can recommend? I’m always a bit concerned about hidden costs with publishing a website.’
Jennifer: Yeah. Easiest way to make a website for free or very low cost is Owlstown.
Ana: Love that.
Jennifer: Owlstown is run by my friend Dr. Ian Li. He wanted to help more professors and scientists be able to create a website with ease.
And when I tell you it can go up in as little as 15 minutes, like if you start it now, it could be done by the end of our workshop. That is true. We have done it together live on a demo. So I really recommend that for a lot of people.
If you don’t care deeply about how your website looks and feels in terms of having control over all of the parts of it, Owlstown is an excellent option for you. I recommend it to a lot of people.
For professors who do want more control over the look and feel of your website, you want to be able to change all of the colors and have different types of pages and formats and layouts. I love WordPress.com.
WordPress.com has great customer service. It’s more affordable than some of the other hosts and it has built-in security and protection. If something goes wrong with your website because someone’s trying to attack it, they have a whole office that will deal with that.
If your website goes down like mine has twice, they have resolved that for me within an hour. I really like WordPress.com. That’s what I set up most of my clients on.
I also like Squarespace.
I do not like Wix. Wix is very buggy and glitchy. In fact, most of the people who’ve come to me for website redesigns have been quite unhappy with their experience on Wix. And so we’re migrating their site to typically WordPress.com.
If you like WordPress, but you don’t want WordPress.com, you want more control over your WordPress, Reclaim Hosting has really great prices for academics and they focus on the academic community. Yeah, Reclaim Hosting is my recommendation for a managed WordPress host where you have full control.
WordPress.com is my number one recommendation.
No Wix, no Weebly.Does that answer your questions?
Oh, Google Sites. I should mention that because my friend Brittany Trinh, who does websites for scientists, she likes Google Sites for people who are just starting out.
But if you like that personalization, WordPress.com or Squarespace is probably going to be a better fit.
Oh, for people who are trying to decide between WordPress.com and Squarespace ’cause they’re both very trusted, highly recommended companies? Squarespace is a little bit more sleek, but its features are a little bit more geared towards ecommerce and selling products. So, in the future you’ll see that some of the changes are more geared towards that.
Whereas WordPress has been a blogging platform for so long that it’s never going to lose all of those capabilities and it’s going to continue to improve them. I like WordPress if you ever plan to have a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel in the future ’cause it’ll give you more, like backend options for the structure of your website that helps Google better understand it. So if you think, “I don’t want to blog now, but I want one in like six years,” start your website on a WordPress site.
Ana: I just want to add something really funny. I have your worst recommendation that is Wix.
Jennifer: Sorry, sorry, If you have a Wix website and you like it, please keep it. Don’t worry.
Ana: No, but I recognize if I were to start over for what I do, which indeed I need much more capabilities, I would definitely do WordPress.
But I always recommend also Owlstown for academics who wants a simple solution because you can also do quite a lot and they show examples and they are really nice actually. Maria Jose, yes. Did hers and really enjoyed the process. Yeah, she was very fast in making it. It was amazing. This also is great. How funny. Okay, so I see Jennifer a lot of people are ranking number one. Amazing! But they had a very nice point, which links to another question we had.
Website, LinkedIn, X, or ResearchGate for scientists?
Ana: Natalia actually was asking also, “What is the difference between the website being active in LinkedIn, X, or ResearchGate? Do they have similar impacts? What’s your opinion?
Jennifer: Academic social media platforms are mostly for academics. And by that I mean that if you’re hoping to reach people in policy, if you’re hoping to reach practitioners, if you’re hoping to reach maybe researchers outside of the academy, if you’re hoping to reach nonprofits, NGOs or foundation or fellowship funding, all of these people like may not have access to or may not regularly use those academic social media platforms.
And that’s one of the reasons why having Google Scholar set up, making sure that when you Google yourself people can find you is really beneficial because there’s so many people beyond the researchers who like to read peer reviewed research who would benefit from finding and connecting with you and who you would benefit from finding and connecting with as well.
Because of that, I really like LinkedIn profiles because it’s where most of those professionals outside of academia do at least have a presence, even if they’re not actively spending time there. Google Scholar because it helps you better show up in Google search results.
And having any of the places that show up at the top of those search results. So maybe your faculty profile, maybe you have a bio on another website of some kind. Making sure those places that do show up at the top of Google search results are updated when possible. That’s going to help.
Anything else you do is going to enhance that. So like if you create a website that’s then going to show up at the top of search results, so it’s going to be an even better and more engaging experience where people can learn even more. But if, when you Google your name, you’re finding the search results that you want, you probably don’t need to increase your online presence in that kind of way unless it’s something that you want for yourself. Did that make sense?
Ana: Yes. We have Natalia there. I also always recommend, in terms of social media, for those of you who want to do social media, to do either LinkedIn or X, Twitter, is through, you hear and see in Twitter and X that there’s quite some haters, but at least in my experience in the academic world, no. And again, not in my academic world, but maybe indeed if you work in sensitive topics, you might get more of these haters. In my world, not really.
Jennifer: I would also say if you are a minority, if you are a person of color, again, yeah, sensitive topics, if you identify as LGBTQ+, there are haters on every platform.
So it’s not like if you go to Instagram over X, it’s going to drastically improve your experience. The people that I’ve interviewed on The Social Academic who’ve experienced really negative reactions experience them everywhere they go.
So I just want you to know that it’s not like you can avoid everything just by being on one, you know, the, the one platform where that doesn’t happen. People thought that Mastodon was going to be like that and it wasn’t. There was just as much hate people thought that Bluesky was going to be like that and it wasn’t.
There’s just as much negative reaction everywhere you go. I just want to put that out there. Like if you are feeling unsafe, it may not be the platform. It may be how you’re interacting with it. It may be that how you feel means that you shouldn’t be there at all.
And as someone who survived domestic violence and had to escape an abusive ex-husband, there have been points in my life where being online was not the safe choice. Where I really wanted to hide. And so I just want to put that out there if something happens that makes you feel unsafe online, it’s okay to remove yourself.
Ana: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing Jennifer. Because there might be people here who also feel like that. And you shouldn’t feel like also guilty for not being online.
Jennifer: Right, that’s what I wanted.
Ana: Yeah. Yes, exactly. I love that you pointed to that. So good. Just to add something to this conversation that adds something that I also recommend when you’re trying to choose like, “Okay, I cannot be doing everything. What should I choose?”
I always say like, what do you enjoy the most? Right? Yeah, some people really have fun on Twitter, others is on LinkedIn, others is maybe in ResearchGate. So just also maybe put more effort on that platform that you enjoy the most.
You also said the key word that I always tell my students, like updated, that’s the key word. I wonder whatever you choose is updated. Not with that. The last paper that you are showing is from four years ago. Have that profile updated and be where you also enjoy it.
I don’t know if I told you all this story, but I started, I just wanted to be a lurker. I just wanted to be there and not interact with anyone and just see what people were doing. So first a colleague told me, ‘but you can create a fake account so nobody knows it’s you, nobody’s going to follow you.’ And I say, ‘oh great.’ But my fake account had a name that was a little bit similar to mine. So of course once I started following the people I knew, they started following me back and this was like, okay, this fake account is not working.
But for years I would not do anything, just look at post. And this was great to stay updated about research, new papers. And then later I did my next step, which was liking and reposting. That would be it. I would never write a comment, I would never write a post, that was it.
And then came the next level which will be commenting to things of my friends, right? Like celebrating with them, they got a new job, you know, they got this grant, this paper and that will be it. There was all these levels that for me at least, each level was more and more challenging. So you also gotta decide what is your level that you feel comfortable with.
Jennifer: Yeah, I’ve actually had professors come to me because maybe they were on Twitter and they’re like, I don’t want to be be on Twitter anymore. Like, ‘I don’t like Elon’ or something like that. And they want to learn Instagram. So then we talk about Instagram, we talk about what that might look like. There’s so many features on Instagram. How you use Instagram isn’t going to be the same way someone else uses Instagram.
But when we talk about it, like they’re like, “Oh, I don’t like that.” They’re like, “I don’t like images.” or “I don’t want to do video.” And, and you know, realizing that actually they like writing text, they like thinking about things in text.
Thinking about what you like, thinking about what you don’t like, thinking about what you want to try, or what you don’t want to explore. Do that before you start a platform or do it as you’re starting a platform.
Don’t feel like once you create your account you’re going to have to have that forever. You can delete anything that you’re feeling like isn’t really a good fit.
Ana: Yeah, so good. And, and actually people also were asking like also alternatives for example to X or Twitter. Well I think we covered this. Probably LinkedIn is a good idea in that case.
Do I have enough publications to set up my faculty profile?
Ana: And Sabrina also had a very nice question. “Hey, my university has a website where I can set up a profile yet I’m hesitant to set up a profile because I don’t have any publications yet. Any advice?”
Jennifer: If your university let’s you set up a profile, you should, even if you don’t have any publications. Having one or two sentences in that area that just says what your research is focused on and who you’re hoping to connect with about that research is going to be just as effective as listing publications.
I have seen thousands of faculty profiles and a huge portion of those wherever they are in their academic career don’t have publications listed. Oftentimes that’s because the person who the profile is about hasn’t updated it or hasn’t provided information. Or, the process to update it or provide information just doesn’t exist or isn’t being managed in a way that can actually facilitate updates happening on the website.
I just want to say if you feel the publications or what’s been holding you back, you don’t have to wait because there’s so many faculty profiles out there that don’t have any publications on them. So I really encourage you to do, make that profile.
Whereas if your university offers you a website space, I would actually recommend not using it and making an external website yourself. So profiles, definitely have on your university website. Websites, I don’t recommend quite as much and we can talk about that if you want. But yeah, generally WordPress.com, Squarespace is a better option, or Owlstown. Better options for you.
Ana: Yes, I love that. And I also always recommend that too because yeah, at the end of the day you might leave that university, right? And your, I see your web website, like your home-
Jennifer: Yeah, but also your university may just decide to stop posting websites, which I’ve seen happen at like six universities before. So your website could just be gone next week and you’ll get an email that’s like, “Oh, we’re discontinuing this service,” and it disappears. I don’t want that to happen to you. And that’s why I’m saying it more so than the potential of you moving universities.
Sometimes if you move universities, you can actually keep that website space. I’ve seen that from people too. So it’s not like if you have a space already that like you should delete it. I’m just saying if you’re starting a website project, I would recommend it being on WordPress.com or Squarespace or somewhere outside of your university server when possible.
Do I have to be online every day as an academic?
Ana: Yes. Lovely. And we have here a question also from Elaine. “Can an academic build an online presence by not being online every day?” And this, I love this because we can also connect be with the how what, what would you recommend, and I guess this means more for social media because of course once you have the website, there it is. So what would you say about, about being online in social media?
Jennifer: That’s a good question. So actually I have a question for you, [Elaine]. When you say you don’t want to be online, does that mean you don’t want to post on social media or does that mean you don’t want to check social media at all for an extended period of time? Both answers are totally fine. I’m just curious how using it less looks like for you, if you don’t mind answering in the in the channel, I would love that.
Ana: Maybe Elaine can answer that.
Jennifer: Yeah, or or unmute yourself if you prefer.
Elaine: I meant that I don’t want to post every day. You know, I don’t want spend so much of time there.
Jennifer: That’s totally, that totally makes sense.
Elaine: I think that the algorithm forget you.
Jennifer: Ah, the algorithm.
So yeah, a lot of people feel like the algorithm forgets you. But the people that you’ve connected with do not.
When you think about who you’re connecting with, it’s actually more important than you posting because when people decide to connect with you, it means that they’re choosing to potentially see your post in the future.
Now with Twitter, it makes it really feel like the algorithm is kind of like working against you because you only get that kind of 10 minute window to reach potential people. Maybe they have you in the For You section, so you show up towards the top. But Twitter is the one platform that sometimes feels like you might be more beholden to that. I would just say, post the same thing twice and call it a day.
But other platforms like LinkedIn, if you post once, that post could continue to show up for people for not days, but weeks and months. I want you to think about your content that you share out there in any capacity as something that can last, something that can be useful for people beyond the time that you’re posting it.
Because of that, you do not need to post every day. Not only do you not need to post every day, you don’t need to post every week. In fact, for most of the professors that I work with, I recommend if you can consider, you don’t have to commit to it, but like if you can consider sharing one post per month that can really impact your online presence. Just one post per month. So people know when they visit your profile, you’re still somewhat active. That makes a really big difference.
You don’t have to post every day, definitely don’t have to post every week. And if you want to take extended months off from social media, but you have that stronger online presence when people Google you, you could do that. You could delete all your social media if people are finding you in those Google Search results with ease and they’re finding what you want them to see.
If you don’t want to be on social media at all or you just want to lurk, that’s an option too. I just want you to have that other side of being findable for the things that you’d like people to find you for that that also be something that supports you.
Ana: Yes, thank you. Okay, we’re going to then start moving into the section of the, the how. I think we indeed covered the, the why, the where.
Would you give us Jennifer some ideas of post that people can access easily I could post about this or about this other topic. Content pillars. Or type of post that they could work on.
Jennifer: There, there’s so many things that you can post about. It really depends on what your personal needs are. So like, I mean, if you have a new publication, there’s a ton of posts that we like, you want to do, we could talk about that for a sec?
Ana: Please, yes.
Jennifer: Yeah, so let’s say you have a a new thing. It doesn’t need to be a publication. Like let’s say a new publication, an upcoming conference talk, an event that you’re attending. There’s a thing that you can share.
That is something that can and probably should be shared more than once. So the first, easiest content pillar is sharing things multiple times.
Let’s say you have a publication. One way to start sharing it is actually before you have the publication, I really recommend talking about research in advance. I’m not saying to give away like all of the secrets that you feel like are really new research on Twitter, but what I am saying is sharing that you’re working on something in a particular topic is a great way to clue people in that there may be something to engage with or read in the future. And honestly, depending on where you’re at, if you’re in like the data collection stage, it might help shape and inform your research. So talking about publications even before their publications is great.
When you submit a publication is probably the most popular time for people to celebrate you. When your publication is accepted is the second most popular time for people to celebrate you. People are actually more excited by the process of publication than they are from the publication itself. And that’s not that your publication isn’t important. It’s that what people care about when they connect with you is you. And the publication itself is just the outcome of what you personally have done.
I’m not trying to downplay your publication at all. It’s amazing and there’s a ton of ways to share it once it’s out in the world, but I just wanted to encourage you to consider sharing it early and those kinds of mindsets about sharing things early is true for events, conferences, things that you care about.
If you’re on a committee, if you’re on any kind of service type thing that you’re doing that is important to you, share it while it’s in process, share it while it’s happening because people love that behind the scenes stuff. They love hearing a little bit more about what you’re doing.
If that feels uncomfortable for you and you’re someone who wants to wait until your publication is out, that’s absolutely fine.
We want to share the things that people really need to know. So that’s what is the publication about? Where can I find more information about it? Who should read this? Should I share it with any particular type of people? Answer questions for people who are unfamiliar with your research area and subject because far more people are going to see your tweet or your post about your publication then are going to be excited to read it.
And that’s not a bad thing, but we have to trust that those people have the potential to share it with someone else who might care, even if they personally do not benefit from reading your research themselves. I think that that’s something the scientists and professors that I’ve worked with have struggled with. There is even a feeling that like if I share this with my friends and family members, like they won’t care. Or like, ‘I celebrate this with my husband, but like my friends on Facebook, no one’s going to care about this.’
And that’s actually an assumption that I think a lot of people have. But when we take those extra steps to invite people into why it’s important to us, why it’s something that we spent that time on, who we want to help, it makes a really big difference. And it can really open your eyes to how much people care about you and the things that you’re doing.
Ana: Yeah, I love, I love that.
Jennifer: Sometimes we’re actually doing this like live on the call because the professor that I’m working with is so anxious about sharing this particular publication or sharing with this particular audience that it feels uncomfortable for them.
One time we were sharing a client’s new book. Their book had come out years before, but it was being released as paperback. And she was like, ‘No one is going to care about this book from 2012. This is so old.’
But when we did it together, she had such a response, not just from people who had read the book the first time, but people who were excited to share it with their students, excited to share it with other people, people who said and felt like it was relevant today. That’s the kind of engagement we can invite when we’re more open about what we do and why we care about it. Even if it’s years after the fact, it can still help people. And because of that you still have an opportunity to share it.
Ana: Whoa, this was so nice, Jennifer, because actually I want to share with all of you also that one of my biggest things was like I thought that we could never share anything again.
Jennifer: Yeah, right. So many people feel that way.
Ana: Like, I already did the post about this paper, I cannot talk about it. Yeah, never again. Right? And then indeed that’s not the game of social media. The game is that first, like for I have here the data for, for Twitter, only 5% of your followers are going to see that post, not to start. So yes, keep sharing even the same post.
But then what Jennifer said, all these ideas like before, before when you see me, right when it’s published, I always say when it’s online first, when it’s the final version. So out of one paper you can write different 10 different posts.
Jennifer: Oh at least. Not saying you have to. If you just like the one post, that’s fine. Try to include your why, like why this is important to me, why I want to help people.
But if you are open to posting more, I want you to know that there are many natural ways to do that. In fact, some, one of the exercises that I’ve done with professors is we take a larger piece of content, maybe it’s their article or a book or like a talk something, something that is quite long and figuring out all the ways we can take this one long piece and break it into different social media posts.
And before we do that, before we do this, like sharing, like lots of sharing things, that’s like a lot of time, right? We really think about who we want to help with that. So for instance, if your scientific paper is aimed at helping other researchers in a particular field, maybe all of your focus is reaching those researchers at different times of day so that someone who’s over in Europe and someone who’s in Australia and someone who’s in South America can see it has the possibility to see it. So just posting that same tweet three times at different times of day might make it easier for a variety of people globally to be able to see it.
Now thinking about the who and how we want to help them is what motivates us to then do the work of sharing it. And if you don’t have a good answer to that who and how it’s going to help them or me, it’s probably not going to be worth the time. And that’s okay.
It’s okay when things aren’t worth the time because that’s helping us better focus on other things. It’s helping us better prioritize. So before you start writing things just to write them, think about you know, who you want to talk with and how you want to help them because that’s, that’s going to help you feel like it’s a good use of your time.
Ana: Yes, that’s good. And then still something that helped me was batching. So although indeed it might take time, but for me it was also that moment of saying, okay, now the paper is coming out, let me write four or five posts thinking yeah, for different purposes and then scheduling. And then you have pause for a couple of months. You don’t need to worry about that anymore, eh. And the same, eh. And I love also the perspective again that Jennifer is giving us about the people.
Talking with some of our students, they were telling me, ‘I hate to talk about my own research but they were saying, okay, what about celebrating the people in your team?’ And then their face was like, ‘yeah, that’s fun.’ So they were very excited to, yes, make posts then about their students either like presenting in a conference or a paper of their student or whatever the student did and that motivated them to do this type of post.
So that’s also something that if some of you struggle to talk about your own work, you could start getting this practice talking about your students in your team, your favorite colleagues, why not, and other people that is not you.
Can you share your struggles and challenges on social media?
Ana: And thinking about that, there is a very nice question from S- now. “So what about sharing about challenges? I do like those posts that are very real and natural, but I be hesitant myself to share those like perfection is kicking in, right now.”
What about sharing about challenges, like personal challenges, that we go through?
Jennifer: Ooh, personal challenges really engage people. It really can actually shift someone else’s mindset or perspective and help them with what they’re going through too. So I love when people are open about posting their struggles or a problem that they’re having.
It’s great if you invite your network to get involved with that. If you find that you want support from people beyond your institution or your colleagues, you can ask social media for support. There’s also ways to ask for support anonymously, depending on what your situation is, there may be another account that can post it for you. I love that there are ways to be more open about your struggles.
I did an interview on The Social Academic on my podcast with Dr. Monica Cox, where she talked about her workplace struggles on social media and how actually posting things helped protect her in legal issues with the university. It actually made a big difference that she had posted these things and shared them in something that was admissible in court. I don’t think that that is a likelihood for everyone, but I do want people to know that posting about your struggles for whatever reason, may be beneficial for you. But it also may be beneficial for other people.
Ana: Yes, thanks for sharing. And here of course, it depends the style, your style, what you want to share, what you don’t want to share. Sometimes you might feel also more comfortable to share that struggle once you have overcome. Sometimes we say we don’t speak from the books anymore.
Jennifer: That’s true.
Ana: So that’s something that maybe some of you feel better or, I love personally, this is part of storytelling, right? The, the problem. And, and seeing, seeing you overcoming this problem. For example, when you, when we are talking about publications, if you tell us also something that was hard for that paper, right? Because we have this bias, bias image of paper finish everything successful while there is behind all those struggles that we all go through. So if you share something about that, that’s also a great way of, of connecting.
We are coming to the end. So I just wanted to show quickly. So Jennifer, I know you love examples and I wanted to show you also some examples of the websites that Jennifer has done. Let me see.
I pulled examples from two early career researchers. You’re going to see three websites. One is a personal website, one is a research lab website from the same person. And then another one is a personal website. So I hope that you find them hopeful, inspirational, and you get some ideas from them.
You do not need to work with me to have your own website. You can definitely make it yourself. And if not, you can hire support locally. You don’t have to work with me (but you can if you want my support). So there’s many ways to create your website and I would love if you shared it with me, if you have one, or if you’re thinking about creating one when it’s live, please email me. I always get excited when people have created websites.
Ana: Oh, this is so nice, Jennifer. Thanks for sharing. Let me drop them then here. And as I have a look, I have a look at them indeed. And we have at least one example of, of something that can be sensitive topic, eh? So you can have a look there also for inspiration.
Jennifer: They may be both sensitive topics to be honest ’cause one is sexual health including transgender people, and the other one is juvenile weapons and gun violence.
Ana: Oh, okay. So actually that the two you mentioned. This is amazing. So good. We are going to close trying to stay on time. I want to thank Jennifer for this super interesting talk. I hope all of you enjoyed. And if you have questions, send them over to me, to Jennifer also on social media. You can please all follow her, interact.
Jennifer: Oh yeah! Let’s get in touch.
Ana: Yes. And I’m going to send the replay tomorrow. We’ll send a replay of this talk in an email and also the links so you can also learn more about Jennifer.
And please, if you have the budget and you want help with this, here you have an amazing person to hire because it’s something important and something that more and more we are giving more attention of also ways of, there is so much time and effort and energy going into your research.
And I always say having this only presence, yes, it takes work, but it can boost that many times. And, and the hard work that you have done is a pity when we just give all that power to the journals to let know about your papers, right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Ana: That’s it. When you can also boost all that, all that visibility.
Can I use research or professional development funding for my online presence?
Jennifer: Whether you work with me or not, you don’t have to always pay for this out of pocket.
Universities are becoming more and more open to the idea of funding this kind of professional development for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, professors, other people who work at universities. So I want you to know that there are options that you can explore on campus or through your funders who may be able to support your work on your website or social media.
Ana: Yes, totally. And linking to that, I also work with a lot of people who are grant writing grant proposals. And I, this is also where we basically speak about how the importance of having a, a personal website. Scientists, these people, they don’t have yet a website.
Through that process, they use part of that money to build that website and boost that, that online presence. Because yeah, when you want, especially when you want to go to big funding and big, big funding calls, having a website, it can be quite helpful.
Jennifer: Yeah, funders love when you have an online presence ’cause it means you’re more likely to share the research that you’re doing, that they’re funding and helping the people that, that research ultimately supports. So they are very excited if you have a stronger online presence, whether it’s your LinkedIn or your website, they’re really happy.
Ana: Yes. So totally a moment for you also to, to work on this. Thank you! Thank you so much. Thank you to all of you here. Also those who stay till the end.
Jennifer: Thank you! So nice to meet you all.
Ana: So good. Stay in touch and see you all very soon. Bye bye.
Martine Cadet interviews me about faculty online presence for the professional development workshop she’s hosting at her university. What is faculty online presence? How can a personal academic website help professors and the people they care about? Let’s talk about your digital footprint as an academic.
Jennifer: Hi everyone, this is Jennifer van Alstyne of The Social Academic. Today I have a special guest who’s actually going to be interviewing me, Martine Cadet.
I’m so excited we’re recording this video as part of a faculty development workshop that you’re doing for your university. So let’s chat about online presence for academics. I’m happy to answer your questions.
Martine: I love it. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for taking the time to meet with me. It’s such an important topic, right? Being digital today is like, you know, brushing your teeth every day. It’s like a no brainer. Everybody has their phones and laptops.
I’m an adjunct professor, and I have found that several of my peers are not actually active digitally. And one of the things that came up is having a website. Mind you, digital marketing includes social media for sure, but it also includes that digital presence online overall websites and blogs and conversations like this on channels and podcasts and so on.
Today, I’m so excited to tap into your expertise in this area of building an academic website. I’m, I’m so excited. And so I have four questions that I truly believe will help any, you know, academic person to identify how important it is to explore having a website or perhaps if they already have one, to continue to maintain it and make it better. And so I’d love to dive in. If you’re ready, let me know, Jennifer, because I can’t wait to hear your expertise.
Jennifer: I am ready.
Martine: Wonderful. And so to get started, I wanted to ask you, Jennifer, can you explain the concept of a scholarly website and why it’s important for faculty to have one, even if they already have a strong presence on social media, why should they even look into kicking off a website and or maintaining one?
Jennifer: That is such a great question. I feel like so many faculty want a website. They’re not really sure if it’s for them, or they think that they don’t want a website, but actually it would really meet all of their professional goals. So let’s chat about it. What is a personal academic website? Well, it’s a place online that you own, that you control, where you can share things like your academic bio, a photo of you, and links to anywhere else that you’re online, whether it’s your faculty profile, your social media accounts.
The thing I love about personal websites for professors is that they can grow as big as you need them to be. They can change their shape and what they hold in terms of the contents and what you wanna share over time. So if you just want a one page personal website that has what we talked about, your bio, your headshot and contact links, that’s great. That’s a perfect place to start from.
But some of the professors that I work with have really extensive needs for their website. They’re trying to reach new audiences. They’re trying to communicate with their current collaborators, you know, attract research funders, share their publications, and really be helpful for their students. There is a teaching aspect to this that I think a lot of people don’t realize that they can have with their personal website. So a personal website can be anything you want it to be. And that’s the beautiful thing.
Professors, if you’ve been thinking about a website for yourself, I want you to know you can have one. You could definitely create your own personal website, or you can hire a professional to create one for you. But it can be up in as little as an hour with a service like Owlstown from my friend, Dr. Ian Li, that is an academic website builder that really supports you to make this a reality like today.
But for some people, you know, it takes a lot longer than that. I don’t want you to think it needs to go up fast or it needs to take a long time to be a good website. You can have the website that you want and that you need for your academic life.
Martine: I love that. And so having a website, the takeaway here, I’m getting right, Jennifer, you can be on social media, but it’s like this added bonus for you, right? To do all those things that you wanna do, that you share, sharing your research, engaging with your students, and so on and so forth.
Let’s talk about that content creation a little bit more. You touched on different aspects of the website that could have the content, either the bio and you know, information about your social and whatnot.
But let’s dive in for one that’s just starting out. Let’s just say I’m a faculty. I wanna do a website. I don’t have one. Can we briefly go back to that content creation and perhaps the resource that you shared is actually a template that’s prompting faculty to include that content. Like can you walk us through the most important content pieces as we get started? That should be there.
Jennifer: Definitely. So, yes, the tool that I mentioned, Owlstown does walk you through all of these steps. So if you have pieces and parts of your academic life, you’re not sure how to bring them together, it’s a step-by-step process that will guide you through that. I want you to know that it is very supportive.
But for anyone who’s looking to build a website outside of Owlstown, or who is gonna be working with a professional to make your website, let’s talk about the content that you need. Definitely a bio that’s the most important thing that you can put on your personal academic website. And you want your bio not to be the standard academic bio that you have. Maybe on your faculty profile, it needs to do a little bit more work because the people who see your academic bio are other academics. There are people who are probably seeing you at a conference, who are gonna be talking with you about your research. But people who come across your personal academic website might be from a variety of fields or countries. They may need a little bit more support to understand who you are, what you do, and the things that you value and care about most as a professor. So I want you to take some time and be introspective when you’re writing that bio to, to really help you make it feel like you, but also communicate with that wider audience. I want the media, the public, and your friends and family to also be able to understand you and connect with what you do based on what you share there. So academic bio is the number one thing that you’ll want to gather.
You’ll also want a headshot, a photo of you. Now, that can be a little bit tricky for some people. You know, I just did my first professional photo shoot. I had an amazing photographer for my engagement photos. And it was so much fun. If you can afford or want to work with a professional photographer, I highly recommend it. It was an amazing experience.
But for the longest time, I have only used selfies on my personal academic website. So I don’t want you to think you have to go out and spend money. You can take your phone and go take some selfies. You can ask a friend or a colleague to take some photos of you. I’ve actually done that for friends, for their first books and for a grant award. Things like, I love taking photos of other people. So I want you to know, you probably have someone in your life who’s willing to take a photo of you too.
There’s lots of opportunities to work with the people around you to create content, but sometimes a selfie is the easiest thing to do. Prop it up on some books. Take that photo with a timer and just call it a day. If you can get your photo and your bio, you can have a personal academic website. You don’t really need anything more than that.
Definitely gather your social media links if you have them. But the truth is, a lot of people with personal websites, maybe not on social media, or maybe they’re not super active on social media or that account that they made, they haven’t actually touched it in like four years. That’s okay.
That’s one of the things I love about personal academic websites. It’s this great tool to help share your online presence and the things that you care about, even when you’re sleeping, even when you’re not active on social media, even when you’re traveling for conferences or grants and you don’t have time to check your phone or don’t want to because you’re so focused on what you’re doing at hand. I want you to have those privileges. And when you have a personal website, it’s doing that work for you even when you’re not working. So I really love that.
Now, in terms of growing the site, there is more content to gather and some of that content, in fact, most of it is probably in your curriculum vitae (CV). So updating your CV and then seeing the different pieces of your life that feel important to you, whether it’s publications, speaking engagements, media mentions, or actually talking about your students and mentees and the people that you collaborate closely with that information. You’ve probably already done the hard work of gathering quite a bit of it. And so placing it on your personal academic website just from your CV, is an improvement.
Now, if you can also go in and add things like abstracts for your talks or publications, links to maybe the conference program or a video of that speaking engagement, if there is one. These are all ways to enhance your website, but I don’t want you to feel like if you don’t have these right at the start that you can’t hit publish, you totally can. Your website can grow with you over time.
Martine: Wonderful tips. My goodness, Jennifer. So good. I love the tip about the selfie. So good. ’cause I know as a faculty, we’re so busy, right? With our work and it, it’s so refreshing to hear the tips that you gave about, you know, reach out to a colleague to take your picture, take a selfie. It’s okay. Right?
I wanna hone back into the statement that you made that I love so much for my next question, when you said, let the website do the work for you, right? And I wanna go back to that.
You mentioned that a website has the added value here for us faculty is to be able to engage with our students, other faculty members and beyond. But how do we get them to come and to see it? Let’s talk about that engagement, right? Yeah. This whole SEO, you know, search engine optimization and website, it kind of scares me. What are your tips with that?
Jennifer: That’s a great question, actually. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a client just last week. We were looking over his new website together. It was a redesign from an existing personal academic website that he already has. And we’re right at the end of this project. And so there’s always this like, “Ooh, like is this gonna do everything I need” kind of feeling? And he said, “My current website doesn’t get a lot of views. Like, is this going to reach people?” And the answer is yes. If you do the work to share it, if you make it available, if you mention it to people, people are gonna come regardless of if they’re Googling you or not. You are someone who is on campus meeting people all the time. You have students coming to your classes. You have students considering your classes. You have people considering your talk for, you know, programs and conferences that they’re running. You have people who are thinking about potentially reaching out and working with you. But when you have that online presence, it’s doing a lot of that kind of in-person work with you.
It’s not like you don’t exist as a person anymore. You have an online presence, but your online presence enhances what people can learn about you even when you’re sleeping, even when you’re not in the room. And this is really important for scholars who, you know, maybe don’t have the funds to travel all the time. Or, who really need their work to reach people beyond their university, beyond their state, or even their country.
Online presence is something that can spark further conversations. But the first step is always being willing to share it yourself first. So places like your email signature, your social media profiles, your faculty profile, making sure that you mention your bio in, or excuse me, you mention your website, URL when you’re sharing your bio with event organizers and with other people who mention you in the media, you have agency and helping people find your website because they’re going to be searching your name and finding your website without you too.
But I want you to remember, like you, you shouldn’t hide your website once you’ve created it. There’s no reason to feel embarrassed or anxious. It’s not self-promotion. It’s actually helping people because when they’re on your website, they don’t have to be there. It’s not like social media where they’re scrolling and like they’re forced to, you know, take a quick look at what you share.
A website is exploratory. It sparks curiosity and it’s an invitation for people to learn more about you for the things that they wanna learn. And they can click off at any time. So I don’t want you to feel icky or negative about sharing your website. But sharing your website is definitely the first step. Google and other search engines, they’re gonna crawl your website. They’re going to start serving it in search results when people Google your name, potentially when people Google topics about your research. So that’s gonna do the work too. There are multiple ways that people can find you and your website, and I want you to know that you have responsibility, but also online that’s gonna do a lot of the work for you.
My favorite part about having an online presence with a personal academic website is it facilitates word of mouth references and collaborations. So if you have a collaborator who has an upcoming graduate student who’s interested in the same research as you, they’re looking for a postdoctoral position next year, that person can easily share your personal academic website with a really great potential applicant for your postdoc position. It facilitates that word of mouth connection that people have. It helps ’em better be able to share who you are and what you care about with other people who they think might be a really great fit to connect with you. So I really love that. It’s just, it’s yourself, it’s the people around you and it’s all of those kind of benefits of being online. So search engines can find you that can help share your website.
Martine: Oh, so good. You know what I love the most in all of this, the biggest takeaway that I’m taking from you here is this mindset shift that you shared about your website is not to be yourself promotional tool. It’s more about presenting yourself so you could help people.
Yeah, like when you said that, I’m like, “oh my gosh, that makes so much more sense,” right? Because then I feel more at ease to share what it is that I can help others do, right? I love this mindset statement that you shared such great nuggets. I wish I could be with you forever.
I have one more question for you, Jennifer. And that’s the big one in regards to what you shared that you said the online world is here and it’s here to stay. And it’s evolving, evolving very, very fast. I mean, two decades ago it wasn’t even half of what it is today.
And so my last question to you, Jennifer, as this whole digital landscape grows every day, what would you recommend a faculty to make sure that they keep in mind to ensure that their website remains relevant and that, you know, they, they update it? Because again, two decades ago it was a completely different experience and who knows what it’s gonna be next year, two years from now? What are your suggestions based on how you see the digital landscape is evolving to ensure that we do if we have a website?
Jennifer: Yeah, that is a great question because I wanna protect your futures too. Like, I’m not gonna give you information or guidance that’s gonna steer you down the wrong path and be a waste of your time. I like personal academic websites for professors because it is lasting. It’s not gonna disappear like if a social media platform no longer exists.
Your website not going to go away if you stop using it or stop having time or attention for it. At minimum, I recommend updating the content once a year. So if you can put a reminder in your calendar to, on that date every year you spend an hour looking through your website pages, just making a list,
what needs to be changed
what needs to be added
what needs to go away because it’s no longer relevant
If you can do that once a year, your website is gonna be doing far better than the vast majority of personal websites because most go un updated.
You know, most people, like, once they create it, it’s there and they’re like, I did the work. But the truth is that Google search engines and the people who are coming to your website, they need new and relevant information. They need to know who you are, what you care about, and the work that you’re doing now and the people that you want to be working with in the future. So taking that time for an annual update for sure.
My second tip is really just being open. I mean, things are going to change over time. I had an amazing guest on The Social Academic just last month that was totally focused on augmented reality, virtual reality, gamification, and all these cool things in the classroom. I know that the way that professors communicate about who they are and what they do, that’s gonna change over time too.
But I’ve met so many people on social media who just say, I’m not gonna join because I don’t know what it’s gonna look like 10 years from now. People are looking for you today. They’re not caring about what you’re gonna be doing in eight years unless they care about you now. You have that opportunity to start reaching people this year, this week, this month.
I want you to have all of that time to be reaching the people who actually care, the people who you want to be having conversations with, the people who you want to be collaborating with, the students who you want in your courses. You have more agency in what you share about yourself online than you might expect.
A lot of people don’t realize they can meet so many goals with their personal academic website, but just being open to having one. Being open that your website may and probably will change in the future because you are gonna change in the future. And your needs and your interests are gonna change in the future.
That’s the best thing that you can do. Be adaptable. Be open to new ideas and open to change if something new that you’re interested in exploring comes up. I think if you do that, you’re gonna be golden. You’re gonna be in such a good place with your online presence, not just now, but long-term. I’m excited for you.
Martine: That’s wonderful. I love this tip about, just check it once a year, pick a time and I’m guessing it could be any time of the year. If you wanna do it right at the end of the year or perhaps over the summer. If you have that break in between semesters and you’re just getting ready for the next semester, like maybe that’s the time. I love that. And it’s so relevant. It makes sense.
This is great, Jennifer. I am so, so grateful for this conversation and I know my peers are gonna be excited to hear all the tips that you shared with us today from why having a website is important as a academic faculty, personal academic website is important from that point to what’s the content creation, how do you make sure that it’s engaging and does the work for itself and truly looking out for the future of it?
My goodness, you gave us everything. And now I’m like, okay, I’m going to do what you’re doing right now watching. Go to the description here and, and click, click, click. Because I understand how exciting it feels to be hearing such information.
Like you said, Jennifer, having an online presence is going to really, really bring a reach of things that you never could have ever imagined. I couldn’t agree more. And so thank you again for this wonderful conversation. Jennifer, you’re amazing.
Jennifer: Thank you. I have loved these questions and I hope that your faculty find it super helpful.
What should go on my research lab website? Hi everyone! My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic, my blog/podcast about managing your online presence in academia.
Today I want to talk about what is a research lab website? And, why should I have one?
This is a question that I’m asked often. Now that I’ve been doing this for 6 years, I have some new perspectives I’d like to share with you. So the 1st thing you need to know is that a research lab website is kind of a lot of work, and if you’re not willing to listen to this idea that it’s a lot of work, you probably aren’t going to be able to enjoy the benefits, and I promise you that the hard work is worth it.
The conversation today is going to be about structure, like what goes on a website. We’re going to talk about whether you need help, whether you want to hire professional support to make your website happen and what you need to consider before you actually take that step. We’ll get into all of the details.
Before we get into your research lab website, I want to give a shout out to my friend Dr. Sheena Howard, whose new book Academic Branding: A Step-by-Step Guide to Increased Visibility, Authority, and Income for Academics is out February 27, 2024.
Let’s talk about the structure of a research lab website. There are so many more pages that you could have on your website than people might expect, so I’m going to go through some ideas today and you can use whatever you find helpful and just not create pages for anything that you don’t.
Everyone needs a Homepage, a main landing page for your research lab website. That’s going to be the only page if you have a one page website, but a lot of people want more.
They want to be able to highlight the people who are involved in their lab, like their team. So you can have a Team page.
You could also have a page that really specifically focuses on your Research Impact and the people who your research is most trying to help: that end user that you’re trying to reach.
Definitely include a page for Publications. Your lab probably has a number of publications that come out every year, and while the individuals who work on those publications, it would be great for them to share them online. Having a research lab share those publications in one place makes it easy for anyone who cares deeply about the research that you’re doing. And helps people, find collaborators.
I love having a News page for research labs because it shows people all of the new things that you have going on, any events, conferences, meetings. This is a great place to curate that for people who are curious.
Speaking Engagements is a page that a lot of research labs don’t think about, to be honest. It’s not a common page on research lab websites, but it’s highly recommended. The people who are in your lab are going out and presenting research. They’re going to conferences. They’re spending money on that travel, whether it’s funded through the lab or self-funded beyond whatever professional development budget there is for that year. I want to make sure that if you have a research lab and the people who are in it are going out and presenting work that they’re doing associated with the lab, that people can still engage and come back and learn about the rest of the research that you’re doing through that Speaking Engagements page. Even though it’s not a common page, I do recommend it.
I love when research labs have a Photo Gallery, something that shows when you get together. Maybe it is just at the annual meeting, but that kind of personal touch makes such a difference for researchers. For students who are considering joining your lab and joining that particular research subject, knowing how personal it is can make a big difference. People are looking to understand the lab culture that you create as a P.I., and I want to make sure that they can see that through different visuals on your website whether you have a Photo Gallery page or just visuals on other pages of the website.
I highly recommend that the P.I., the principal investigator of the lab, has their own page, something that includes a bio, a photo, how people can get in touch with them, and the research topics that they care most about.
If you have a personal academic website that is separate from this page, your research lab should still have this page even if you have your own website. That’s because people really want to understand why you do the work that you do, what kind of impact that you hope to create in the world, and the values that you care about. If you can share that in your bio on your website, it makes a massive difference. Each co-P.I. should get their own page. So if there are multiple P.I.s in your lab, make sure that each person has their own page with their bio, headshot, and any links like contact information that they should have.
Some people really consider whether they want a Team page that has a bunch of bios on it or photos on it. Some people actually like to create an individual Bios pages for each member of their lab, more like a faculty profile. This is more work, but it can really help create an online presence for people who might not have one otherwise. And it’s a wonderful way to highlight staff and other supporters in your lab who may be there more permanently.
I want to make sure that you know that you can have a Team page with a number of bios on it, but each person could also have their own page if you’d find it helpful. This is particularly helpful if you are at a research center or have a larger group with multiple teams of researchers or multiple teams of P.I.s. The more people there are in a research lab, the better it is to have that information out there so people can better understand the person that they’re most closely collaborating with.
Anywhere on the website is a great place to have contact information, whether you’re on an individual bio for someone or on the homepage of the website. You want to make sure that that contact information is easy to find. Some people like having a form on their website, but I found that forms don’t always function correctly across different devices. Sometimes in different areas of the world. Having an email address at minimum is super helpful. Where you include that contact information? Definitely include it on the homepage. Include contact information on any bios. I like to have a contact button or a contact space in the upper menu in the heading. Even having contact information in the site footer. Basically, if you want people to be able to contact your lab, get in touch with you, if you want media to be interested in your research and be able to actually reach out to talk about it, having that contact information easy to find is super important.
Another question you want to consider is, do you want an email list? A lot of labs already have some kind of internal email list of members of the lab, people that they’re already communicating with. Would you like people to be able to subscribe to a larger email list or maybe a newsletter that you’re planning on having? That’s something to consider when you have a website because there are legal permissions and requirements that are involved when making that decision.
You want to make sure that you think about that when you’re starting that website project. So if you work with a developer, they know to make sure that you have all of the permissions correct. Basically, you want to protect people’s privacy and make sure that they’re legally opting in to receiving email from you. You’re not just sending it without permission.
I always recommend having a Research Funders page somewhere where you can thank the people who are helping fund your research and helping it really make an impact. So if you can have a Research Funders page to thank people? That is wonderful.
You might also consider a Partnerships page, especially if you partner with corporations or organizations.
The next question is with all of these pages in mind…and you don’t need all of these pages! You definitely can start with a 1, 2, or even 3 page website. You can grow it over time. So don’t feel like even though I just listed 15 pages or something that you have to have all of those.
But when you think about the website that you want and dream about for your research lab, or your research group, or your research center, are you like, “Oh yeah, we could do this ourselves! We actually, we have a communications person on staff or at the university who can support this project. I actually think that we can do this in house.”
Well hey, that’s great! Now you have a bunch of page ideas. You can start putting together a document that actually will support that person in making changes to your website.
But if you think about that question, “Can I do this myself?” And your answer is like, “Oh, I don’t think so. I definitely need to hire help with that.”
Let’s talk about what that looks like.
When people ask me questions like, “Can I do this myself?” I often turn that around and say, “Do you want to do this yourself? Is that something you want for yourself? Because the question of can I is of course. I mean you’re a professor, you’re likely a PhD. You can learn this. You can totally learn to build a website and develop those skills if you want to. And now you have a list of website pages that you might consider including on your research lab website. So not only can you develop the skills, you know what to put on the website.”
A question is, do you want to develop those skills? Because a lot of people that I talk to are like, “No, I’m busy doing my research. I’m busy being a mentor and doing these leadership positions on campus. I don’t have time. I don’t have time to develop these skills even if I wanted to.” And to be honest, most people that I talk to, they just don’t want to.
Now, if you want to develop the skills, I promise this is possible. You can create a personal academic website. And if you want a research lab website that doesn’t involve a lot of decision making, you just want to be able to add these pages? I highly recommend Owlstown. It is an academic website builder from my friend Dr. Ian Li. He knows that research labs need websites. He’s created a free service to help you create one yourself. Please know there are options for you if you want to do-it-yourself.
Another question that I typically have for people who come to me and say, “Can I do this myself? Do I need to hire help?” is, “Do you have time to do this?”
Because you might not have the time. You’re already doing a lot. You’re already adding value to the world. You might not have the capacity to build another skillset.
And even though you can create your website yourself, it may not be the best use of your time. You are someone who prioritizes your time very well. That’s why you’re in academia and being successful at it. But that also means knowing when to say no. So if you don’t want to do it yourself, but you want a website, hire help. If you don’t have the time or capacity to do it yourself, but you want a website, hire help. I mean, that is my goal, is to help you get help whether it’s working with me or whether I can direct you to someone else who’s better suited to help you.
“The truth is you either have to invest the time. Or you have to invest the money. To get it done in the best way possible, it often takes both.”
Hiring professional support for your research group website
Let’s talk about how to hire help. Most developers don’t know how to make a research lab website unless you know what you’re looking for, like the pages you want and the content that you want to share on those pages. These are also things that you need to build yourself. If you want to D.I.Y., your research lab website, so know what pages that you want to have and what you’d like to be included on each of those pages. Either way, that’s the step you’re going to need to take.
Actually, that is even a block for people like what to put on your website? You don’t know what goes on the page, what to say. There’s so many things to think about like photos or links or buttons. Sometimes it becomes hard to communicate with a website developer if you’ve not already thought about some of those things in advance.
I highly recommend that you create a Word Doc or any kind of document processor that you use, something that you can share with your website developer. If you already know your bio and you know what you want to link, like publications, now you have a Publications page. If you want to highlight team members and their bios, you got to gather all of that stuff. Put it into a document. That’s some work that you do have to do upfront. But once you have those things, the developer can make you a great website.
You need the vision and hopes for your website before you start talking to the website developer. That’s something that becomes surprising for a lot of people. And I want to tell you this because I’m trying to save you money.
The cost of a website can range wildly depending on the skill level of the developer, what country they’re located in. It can range from about $1,500 USD to over $65,000. A P.I. reached out to me at the end of 2023 who had been given a quote by a website design agency for their research lab website of $65,000. This is a huge range for professional websites that are specific like a research lab, research group, research center, or other grant-funded initiative.
But if you don’t know what you want on the website, the quote that a developer gives you is not going to be specific to your needs. They’re going to quote you what they think you need. Having things prepared in terms of what you want to be on your website in advance will result in a more accurate quote.
Your website will be launched quicker and you’ll be celebrating your new website. That’s what I want for you.
Doing this work, thinking about this, being a little introspective about what you want on your website upfront? Really helps set expectations for you and the website developer or designer on this project. I want to avoid any miscommunication. Having that information upfront will help you both know what to expect.
How a lab website can be life-changing for researchers
Okay, so what are the benefits now that we’ve gone through all the things you can have on your website, and if you need to hire help. Now you’re really like, “Oh, this is kind of tangible now. How is this going to affect my life?”
Well, a research lab website is great. It highlights the research that your lab does. Research can go on your Homepage, News, Research Impact pages. I mean, it shows visitors how they can actually engage with your research. And, with you, as a researcher and a person to potentially collaborate with in the future.
It really helps people invite you for speaking engagements that are really specific to your topic, because I know that there are things you have to say no to, that aren’t going to fit into your schedule.
I want to make sure that when people are reaching out to you, it’s even closer aligned to what you hope for that relationship in the future. Again, not everyone cares about that Speaking Engagements page, but that’s where you’re out talking with people who are in your research field and who already care about it. That’s why they’re coming to the talk. So having that page is something I highly recommend. I hope that maybe this podcast and blog makes an impact on research centers out there. I think that this is a page more people should have.
The impact of the hard work that you do for your research is apparent on each page of your website, but people can’t really explore that in any way now. When you don’t have a website, people are probably engaging with your research when they come across your publication, if they’re searching for it. When they see you on Twitter or LinkedIn, these are all kind of momentary.
Even meeting at a conference, it’s great to see the people that you care about, but you don’t always catch up on all the cool things that they’re doing. There’s just not time. And oftentimes that’s not the main topic of conversation.
When people can explore that in advance before they even come and meet you at the conference? Your lab website gives something for the conversation to be informed by. And it can really prompt new relationships, new collaborations, and help people better refer you or recommend you to the people who care about your research, whether it’s their students, their research funders, or other potential collaborators for you. I think it’s so great when you can highlight your research, media mentions, publications, collaborators, funders, events, speaking engagements. Gosh, there’s so much you can include on a research lab website, and it’s all really exciting.
Your website works for you even when you’re sleeping, even when you’re traveling, or going to conferences and meeting people in person. Your research lab website is a tool. It’s a boost to every in-person interaction that you’ll have in the future.
When people meet you or consider going to your talk, I mean they Google you, they just do, and they look at your research lab and sometimes they decided if they wanted to go to your panel or they want to go to someone else’s. Your website really helps them make that decision. And gets people excited to be in your audience.
People are already searching for you and the change that you want to see in the world. I want your research lab, your research group, or your research center to be more findable. I want your research lab to be the answer to the question that they’re looking for.
You are a part of your research lab website too
A lot of P.I.s are specifically looking for a research lab website, like, “This isn’t about me, it’s about my research or my team.”
I get it. They want ‘to remove the ego’ from their website. But a good research lab website is direct and clear about how you help people, and it actually helps people because it’s clear. And that includes sharing a bit about yourself as the P.I.
Be a little bit more open than you might be comfortable with.
Be proud of the research that your lab does and your team. Your website can proudly stand behind your work for you.
The labs, research centers, and grant funded initiatives that I work with care deeply about their team and their collaborators. They want their people, their staff, postdoctoral researchers, students, and sometimes the people that their research supports to actually inform the plan for their website. It gets everyone excited about the project.
My strategic website planning service starts with in-depth interviews with the principal investigators and members of your team. It’s my favorite part of the process because I get to discover all the amazing things you do. Especially the things that aren’t being communicated with your online presence. I’d love to help you with your research lab, research center, or grant funded initiative website.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Social Academic podcast. Please share it with a friend or a colleague who might find it helpful.
Subscribe to The Social Academic so you don’t miss the next one.
For more page ideas and tips for your academic lab website, check out this episode of the Beyond Your Science Podcast from my friend Brittany Trinh. I love her tip about updating your website content before recruitment season. Brittany and I love collaborating to create your website for you in as little as a single Team VIP Day.
Get inspired with the award winning lab websites from the 2023 Best Personal Academic Websites Contest which Brittany and I judged along with Dr. Ian Li from free academic website builder, Owlstown.
Julia started Wise Investigator to help researchers get funding for their research
I had this picture of what getting research funding looks like in my head. I had sought small grants and travel funding in grad school. But never the big funding proposals my online presence clients write. I know that research funding might be integral to your career. It may also be something you’ve never attempted before, and has recently become a goal for you.
I learned so much about getting your research funded the 1st time I met Dr. Julia Barzyk.
After 10 years at a major United States funding organization, geoscientist Dr. Julia Barzyk left to start Wise Investigator. She helps Principal Investigators (PIs) get funding for their research to grow their careers.
I’m delighted to feature Julia here on The Social Academic. Let’s uncover some of the hidden curriculum together to get your research funded.
Jennifer: Hello, everyone. I am Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic. Today, I’m talking with Dr. Julia Barzyk of the Wise Investigator LLC. We’re gonna be talking about research funding.
Save this for later, because you’re gonna wanna come back to it.
Julia, I’m so glad you joined us today. Would you please introduce yourself?
Julia: Thanks, Jennifer.
I’m Julia Barzyk. I’m speaking to you from my home in Durham, North Carolina. I spent most of my career as a geoscientist.
Right now I’m working full-time helping university researchers get funding for their research, and by doing so, grow their careers more generally.
Jennifer: Why is this something that’s important to you? Why did you decide to do this full-time?
Julia: I’m gonna tell you a little bit about my responsibilities that I had in the position that I was in prior to what I’m doing now, because I think that answers a good bit of the question.
“I’m a geoscientist. I spent many years working at a major United States funding organization managing a portfolio of research in geoscience and civil engineering.”
These are projects that researchers at universities, otherwise known as professors, or principal investigators, or PIs, are performing on university campuses. They’re conducting their research with these funds, they’re supporting students with these funds, and they’re supporting themselves in terms of some salary with these funds.
My duties involved going out into the academic and the scientific community and letting people know about the opportunities through the organization I was with.
I had a lot of interactions with people as part of this outreach. Then we would have conversations that would go to the actual research topics that people were interested in pursuing, discuss and refine those topics.
Some of these people would then submit proposals. I was in charge of managing the proposal evaluation process. I directed that by sending these out for review, getting the comments from those evaluators, synthesizing all of that, and making recommendations on what was gonna be funded.
Some of these proposals were funded, and after that, I followed the work. I managed certain aspects of it. I was also responsible for connecting those university researchers with government scientists and engineers who wanted to collaborate with them. The government only has the capacity that it has in its labs with the staff that it has, and so they can extend that capacity by partnering with extramural researchers, otherwise known as university researchers.
The reason why I went into all of that was because as I was going through this process, year after year…
“I realized that the vast majority of these PIs, or professors, that I was working with were not prepared to know how to engage to their full advantage with this process.”
Generally, the advice that they’re given and the support that they’re given centers around the preparation of the proposal itself. Now, proposal preparation is very important, so I don’t wanna diminish that. This is one of those things where you’ve gotta check all the boxes. So I’m not saying don’t worry about the proposal. Get all of the support that you can on the proposal is my advice to anyone.
But, all those other steps that I described were aspects of the process that principal investigators didn’t even really know existed. By learning about the broader process, they can have a lot more success and not waste time writing proposals for an opportunity that may not even be a great fit because it’s a huge effort to write that proposal. Even if someone is not interested in funding your work, I feel like you would much rather know that before you put in those dozens of hours on writing a proposal. I decided the best way I could fix the situation was to resign from that position to dedicate myself fully to doing what I’m doing now, which is teaching this hidden curriculum to these principal investigators (PIs).
Jennifer: Tell me a little bit more about this hidden curriculum. It sounds like universities are providing some support for researchers, especially when it comes to preparing that proposal, but there’s a lot of things that researchers don’t know about that process.
Can you give me an example of some part of the hidden curriculum that your work supports?
Julia: Just one example of all of these pieces of information that piece together to form this hidden curriculum is when you’re interacting with someone from one of these organizations, is it a community-driven organization like National Science Foundation, or is it a mission-driven organization like something maybe with the Department of Defense?
Because while they’re both gonna be supporting basic research and they may also be supporting more applied research, that is just one thing that can really help guide somebody’s understanding and decisions and the questions they ask and the way they pursue that opportunity because there may be more that an organization wants to get out of a relationship with an investigator than only supporting the science or the research itself.
These are the kinds of things I talk about with clients so they can kind of wrap their heads around the bigger picture and then know how to use that to their advantage and know where the best places for them to engage are or the best places for them to say, “I’m gonna pass on that.”
Jennifer: Yeah, actually, just the word that you said, “relationship,” like it’s an ongoing relationship. It’s not just a proposal that’s going to be funded or not funded, it’s a longer journey.
That’s something that I did not recognize when I was still applying for research funds. I am so happy that someone like you exists because universities just aren’t providing the kind of support that researchers actually need to launch themselves into the world into this more funded reality. I want that for researchers. And so I’m so glad that we’re talking today.
Now, one thing that I wanted to ask you about specifically was a LinkedIn video that you had posted in the last couple of weeks. And you talked about how important it is to ask open-ended questions when you first connect with someone at a funding agency. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Julia: The short answer is that there are so many opportunities and by that I mean funding opportunities that are available that any one representative will know about. Even if this person at the funding organization is responsible primarily for one program or one opportunity, they are going to know about many, many other opportunities within their organization and even at other organizations.
At the same time, the researcher is going to have many different ideas for research that they would like to pursue. They may go into a conversation thinking, “Oh, I think this topic would be a good fit for this opportunity based on something I read.”
But if you go in with that narrow focus, you could get a “no” or even if you got a “yes,” you could still be missing out on more information.
It’s the open-ended conversation is for both parties to say kind of, here’s an overview of the opportunities and someone to say, here’s an overview of my interests and what I do. And even beyond the research topic, are they engaged with the community? Are there other aspects of what they do that are important and could be relevant to that funder? But with a yes or no question, you may not get to that.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s fascinating. So it really is a conversation starter. And it’s because both of you as the person submitting the proposal and the research funder are able to bring information to that conversation that can help you both get closer to your goals. I really like that. I really have never thought about it this way before.
Can I ask, do you get pushback from people who are coming to work with you? Are they like, wait, this is how it works? Like, I had no idea. Is there a lot of shock?
Julia: Really, their reaction is really one of relief. Because it’s like they know that there’s more to the picture. Because these are very bright people. And they’ve seen aspects of this manifest here and there. But to have somebody put all of those pieces together, it does provide a relief.
It’s not so much that they’re shocked, but that it’s like, “Oh, okay, now I see it.” And then once you see it, it’s one of those things you don’t really unsee it.
And that’s why we talk about a kind of a transformation because once you know this stuff, you know it, you don’t have to relearn it. You just really are getting to that next stage of your career where the relationship building is important and not in a way, sometimes people would have a feeling of, oh, if it’s a relationship, you know, that can go the wrong way.
If you have a closed network and you’re calling on the same people for opportunities all the time, it’s not letting other people into that circle, into those opportunities. And that’s the way we don’t wanna go where people say, “Oh, it’s an old boys club,” or something like that.
At the same time, we all are building relationships with each other. So we wanna take the positive and the good and the productive aspects of building relationships and sharing opportunities, not the kind of relationship building that closes the opportunities for other people.
Jennifer: I like that. When we first met, one of the things that I pointed out was how much I liked your bookcase behind you. I really like all the things that are on your bookcase and it tells me something about you. You actually talked about how that was like a conscious decision, isn’t that right?
Julia: Yeah, I think definitely you want to, if we’re talking about the remote-first environment, you really want to be setting yourself up with the tools that you need, with the environment that makes you feel good.
That way, when you have an opportunity to be on a podcast, or to have a meeting with a potential collaborator or a client that you can just get right to it. Just like if you met in a coffee shop and you were just set. You got your cup of tea or got your cup of coffee and you sat down and you got right to it.
And so that’s something that’s overlooked, especially now. I mean, if we’re talking about the funding environment, where I believe we can consider the funding environment or the funding landscape to be remote-first. I feel like a lot of professors, they definitely had to adapt to a lot with the pandemic and teaching on Zoom. Fortunately, they’ve really restarted the campus life environment and that’s wonderful. But it could be the case that they start thinking, “Oh, I’m back here all in real life again and I have this dynamic environment in my lab, in my building, in my office.”
“But the funding environment, I believe we should think about that as remote first. I think everybody should set themselves up to be able to thrive in that remote environment.”
Jennifer: I love that, remote-first. That’s definitely a new idea for a lot of researchers. I mean, at least when I talk to the professors who I work with on their online presence, a lot of them say, “I don’t network online. I network in person when I’m at conferences. I network at these in-person events,” but when you think about research funding as a remote-first environment, it means that you also need to reconsider how you are able to and want to network. I really love that you brought that insight to us.
Jennifer: Now, the professors that I work with at least have anxiety about talking about their work, about talking about their research online. And I really help them with that process and build their confidence.
Why is that helpful for research funders to see? Why is having an online presence helpful for people who are actually funding that research?
Julia: First of all, the most practical reason would be just to be findable. If you have something online that has some ability to show up in a search engine and a LinkedIn page is good for that because search engines like that, website can be optimized to show up in a search engine. And that’s a way that when people at a funding organization are looking for experts…
And of course we think, “Oh, they’re looking at me so I can review proposals. Well, that’s more work.” And that is true. They may be looking for you so that you can hopefully do some work for them, or let’s just say for the community. And that’s something that comes to mind first.
But there are other reasons why people in the government or at funding organizations will be looking for experts:
to serve on a panel
to serve on a committee
to speak at a workshop
or participate in a workshop
And so you do want to be findable. Then maybe you’re findable and that does lead being fundable.
Then beyond that, you do wanna stay top of mind. That’s a spaced repetition type thing. It’s that if you keep seeing somebody, then when you are in a conversation with a colleague, I need an expert in this, or who could I talk to about that? That’s the person that’s going to pop to mind as well as building this know, like, and trust, which is important for relationships, especially in the virtual environment.
Beyond that, I would say it moves into being supporting inclusivity, because like I was saying before, I definitely know that people at these organizations want to bring out and bring new people into the conversation. They can do that most easily if people are findable.
“Beyond that, moving into can it bring you any kind of advantage to a proposal, to a funding decision? Well, decisions are going to be made based on strict evaluation criteria. And that’s the way that they should be made. That said, I think very much a picture is worth a thousand words in this case.”
Julia: Because when you are writing a proposal, there is either a strict page limit on the project description, or there’s an effective page limit because evaluators don’t want to read, more than a certain number of pages.
But if you can show that you’ve engaged in the community, people know that about you because there’s some information that demonstrates that, be it photos, or a press release, or something like that on the internet they may have seen. Then it’s demonstrating, “Oh, this person has done this community-based work that they’re talking about doing in the proposal.” Or, “Oh, we’re really hoping that these researchers could maybe collaborate with some of our government scientists and engineers. Here is some evidence that they did that in years past with another group of collaborators.”
These are things that anyone can demonstrate about themselves online. It kind of proves the point more than just writing a few sentences saying, “Oh, we’ve got these great ideas. We promise we’re gonna do all this stuff.”
Jennifer: I love that. It’s like more social proof, more engaging places that those research funders can explore about you. Now, I am curious. Let’s say I’m a researcher who’s ready to start finding some research funding. Where do I start? It sounds like it’s not with the proposal. I need to have a conversation. So where do I start?
Julia: The first place to start would be to go to, and now I’m gonna speak mostly about federal government opportunities, but it would be to go to Grants.gov and to search by keyword for funding opportunities that you may be able to submit to. You’re gonna see a lot of stuff come up from all different agencies and organizations. It’s a lot to start working your way through.
If you’re at a university, your institution may have, or probably does have a subscription to commercial tools that will help you do these kinds of searches too. I would say, sure, do that. And that’s something most people think to do because they know that that’s available. That’s kind of what I’m calling like a bottom-up approach.
They should also be doing a top-down, which is to actually go to the websites of these various organizations. It’s time-consuming and it’s cumbersome because many of these websites are not easy to navigate. Some of them may say clearly, oh, “Find funding” or “Grants”, and you can go there. And even if you go there, you may get a little tripped out because it may be kind of a dead end or something. But if you’re persistent, try to find it on the website because then you’re getting the big picture view of what is this organization broadly.
“What you wanna do is when you’re going top-down or going from the bottom up is look for the names of actual people. These are your program officers, or program directors, program managers, technical points of contact that could be called or other points of contact. And you want to reach out to them because there is so much information out there.”
Julia: There is no hope. I mean, I don’t mean to sound too pessimistic, but there’s very little hope of being able to sort through it all on your own. And you don’t wanna find yourself behind your computer, just scrolling PDF after PDF hundreds of pages of this stuff, trying to think where your research could fit when it’s a much better option to
send the email
a video call
an audio call
Get on the phone with someone who works at one of these organizations and ask them “What would be the best opportunity for me?” Have that back and forth conversation. I encourage people to reach out because I worked with many of these folks for many years and they are friendly people.
Their email inboxes do get very full. So if you don’t get a response at first, just write back, but they wanna hear from you and they want to help you. I promise that. So don’t hesitate to reach out.
Jennifer: I love that. They wanna hear from you and they want to help you and follow up if you don’t hear back because they do wanna hear from you. That’s so important for people to know. Thank you for sharing that.
Wise Investigator, a program for researchers like you
Jennifer: Tell me more about your program. I wanna hear all about it because I think some people listening are gonna wanna join.
Julia: When we start out in this 10-week program, which they’re able to participate in by asynchronously in terms of watching some recorded classes, but then also each week have a one-on-one meeting with me so that we can then talk about how they’re getting their materials and their situation aligned with the material that we’re focusing on that week, if that makes sense. They do have some assignments week to week and we go over that each week so they get that one-on-one feedback and support.
We start off talking about a research vision and getting clear on that. And that aligns with the focus on the online presence and really up-leveling that because your online presence should be guided by your overall career and even life vision.
From there, we break down the mechanics of the funding process. And that’s some of the stuff I was talking about when we started the call about what are actually all of the steps that occur for something to go from a conversation to a funded research project and then after, what happens after it’s funded. By pulling back the curtain on this, then that really helps clients start to see, “Oh, how can I help move this process forward? How can I be a more active participant in these various steps and build these win-win-win relationships?”
“It should be a win for the person performing the research or the Principal Investigator, a win for the individual that you’re working with, that program officer, and a win for the broader organization.”
Julia: By learning what goes on behind the scenes, that helps support achieving these outcomes.
From there, we go into framing research questions effectively. This is something that it’s pretty spotty in terms of, some faculty have had some training in this previously, but many of them have had no training in it whatsoever.
This is very much an iterative process in terms of looking at their ideas. They get ideas out on paper and we iterate on that to get those framed in a way that’s going to be most advantageous for them to be able to present this material to a general audience, to an audience of scientists who are maybe not in their specialty, but just have general technical knowledge. And then of course, they still have to explain it down in the weeds to the technical experts who will eventually do the evaluations on the proposal.
From there, we talk about the approaches of actually getting in contact with these program officers so that they can have the most productive conversations possible. That really provides a lot of relief for clients because that’s something that they hear a lot, kind of like what I was just saying about, just talk to them, just reach out, just talk to them. And they don’t necessarily know, “Well, what should I say in the email? How should I start the conversation?” And so we go over all of that and I provide that information, which is helps people get started on those conversations.
Jennifer: Oh, this feels like such a supportive process. I really like that. What is the thing that you say people are getting most from your work together?
Julia: You know, it’s been interesting that the feedback that I’ve gotten in terms of what has been most valuable has really varied from client to client. Some of them definitely, that framing of the research question where people have said, “No one has ever sat down with me and gone through this before.” And these are people who are Assistant Professor positions at top programs and they’ve accomplished so much in their careers, yet they never had that helping hand to just take the time to work through a one-page document and pull out the parts that are kind of most important and need to be emphasized and reorder them and draw out the impact. That’s an exercise that many of them have never been through before.
Others have appreciated the fact that this provides a broader framework for them to approach the entire process. And many of them have really had a reaction that they weren’t expecting to have about how good they felt about starting that online presence.
In fact, one of my clients, just six weeks into working with me, using what she learned in the program, and it wasn’t even something that I had coached her to do specifically, but she took the information she was learning, she hadn’t finished the program, but she came in and said that she had actually gotten additional funding just by sending an email.
So while you’re not going to get a $300,000 reward by asking for it in an email, and that’s not the way we want things to run, she had a situation where she was able to take some beautiful photos that had been taken of her working with a student in the lab, attach those with the description of the progress that she had made to an internal funding body within her organization, and said, “Hey, look at this, look at this great work.” And they said, “Yeah, just here’s the funding to support this person over the summer,” just like that.
Those are those quick wins, which of course it’s great to get that support for the summer. But also just how she was beaming with excitement to say, “Oh yeah, it doesn’t always have to be so hard because now I know I should just ask for it, and I’ve got these great photos, and I know what to say on the email.” And that’s a quick win. So that’s a really great outcome.
Jennifer: Oh, that made me feel so warm, I love that, like an email with photos of her working with the students. That’s great.
Julia, it has been wonderful to talk with you about Wise Investigator and your program and all of the amazing work that you’re doing. How can people keep in touch with you after this call?
I think you understand just how much of a privilege it is to work with the clients that we work with because we work with such talented people. I don’t know if a person can really take credit for a gift of talent, but they can take credit for the hard work and dedication on top of the talent that these folks put in.
We’re so fortunate here in the United States that we have people coming from all over the world to continue their studies here and make lives here, and not only to do the research that they’re doing, which is what I support them with, but the contribution they make in teaching, which is enormous.
I’m just inspired by my clients every day, and just a shout out to them because that’s why I’m doing this. I’m here to serve them. I just wanted to give them the credit they deserve for all of the hard work they’ve done to get to the point that they’re at, and what I’m able to do with them is really a small, give them a small helping hand just to get to this mid-career stage after all of the years and years that they have put in. It’s a privilege to be able to do that.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for joining me on The Social Academic. This has been a conversation with Dr. Julia Barzyk of Wise Investigator. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next interview.
Julia Barzyk founded Wise Investigator LLC to help U.S.-based university researchers get funded so they can grow their careers with the intention and resources they need to thrive. Prior to starting Wise Investigator, she managed a portfolio of basic research in geoscience and civil engineering at the U.S. Army Research Office. She received her Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago. Julia lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and two teenagers.
For professors and scientists, a personal website is a big project that’s well worth your time. It’s the best way to manage your online presence long-term. Your personal academic website can include a portfolio of pages that showcase your
teaching
research
publications
speaking engagements
service
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to my my blog, The Social Academic. Now also a podcast and YouTube channel. This article was updated for 2024.
A personal website can be life changing professors, grad students, and researchers like you. In this guide, discover the 7 steps to an academic website:
You can make your own personal academic website. You’ve got this. When you do, your website will help people explore your research, teaching, and the things you care about. I’m excited for you! And this guide is here to help.
P.S. Bookmark this page so you can come back to it.
7 steps to take your website from start to launch
Creating a personal academic website is a long-journey. It’s not a 10-minute project like some articles claim. A website is typically a multi-day project. It may take you months. And that’s ok.
Some professors reach out to me for an academic website that
brings it all together for professors who “wear many hats” or feel like it may not be possible to “bring my identities together”
highlights their new book while helping past publications better reach new readers
invites aligned partnerships or relationships (i.e. with researchers around the world, community organizations, corporate partners, funders, and the people your research helps most)
creates a legacy for their work for a retired professor
celebrates their new position and prepares for their future for professors who transition to a new role
shares their research so people can engage in meaningful ways
helps them have a stronger online presence that supports a new goal or achievement
redesigns the website they made themselves years ago that “doesn’t feel like me anymore”
When you’re intentional about creating space for your online presence, you can help more people. For many of the professors I work with, a stronger online presence helps them move from the spark of “I can have a website” to “I deserve this space.” We deserve this space.
As academics, I want you to know that “we can create this space for ourselves.” You don’t need to work with me to have a stronger online presence. A PhD student scheduled a time to meet with me about designing her website for her. She didn’t need to wait to meet with me, “Have you heard about Owlstown? It’s a free academic website builder from my friend, Dr. Ian Li.” I wanted her to know she didn’t need my support. There was an easy solution for her personal academic website. That Owlstown is a solution I trust for most professors.
I have resources to help you on my website on The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. You don’t need to work with me to make your personal academic website. Here are my website resources for you. I hope this guide in particular helps you move forward efficiently to make your personal academic website a reality. Following it will help you get your academic personal website from start to launch smoothly.
The best way to start making your personal academic website is by planning the structure of your website. If you don’t have an idea about what you want to share, you’ll get stuck.
Let’s decide what to include on your professor website.
Planning your website
The structure and organization of your academic personal website determines the written, visual, and video content you’ll want to create. If you plan on sharing a lot of information, you can have more pages on your website.
Your personal academic website might include things like
About page with your academic bio and headshot
Research page
Current project
Research outcomes
Teaching page
Course descriptions
Syllabi
Teaching Statement/Philosophy
Publications page
Abstracts or descriptions
Publication links
Speaking Engagements page
Contact page
Links to your social media profiles
Blog
If you want a simpler website, a smaller structure is recommended:
About page with your academic bio and headshot
Link to your CV
Links to your social media profiles
The simplest website structure is just 1-page. But it isn’t right for everyone. This tends to work well for graduate student websites. And professors who want the easiest website to maintain.
The more you want to share, the more pages your site will need.
If you’re unsure about what to include on your personal website, let’s talk. I help professors think through who they help and the real people who will visit their personal or lab websites with my Website Strategy service. I’m here to help you too if you want support.
Gather written content for your website
Once you’ve decided on a structure and what you want to include, write down all the written content you want to share on your website. If it’s text and you want it on your website, write it down.
Make a list of the pages you need to write content for. A sample for a simple 3-page personal website might include
About Page
Academic bio: 150-350 words
Research interests
Research Page
List of current project(s)
Longer description of current research topics
Important outcomes or other research highlights
Publications Page
Publication details (not in standard citation format), preferably with an abstract or description
Write the content for each page in a document to complete this step. You might decide to hire help from a website designer or developer. It’s helpful to have a document with your written content ready to share with them.
If you can get support with this project, I encourage it! If you know what you want on your website, I’ve got an amazing website development partner who can handle the technical side of launching your website. We can also work together 1-on-1 on your website strategy. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want professional support on your website project.
Edit your content for the web
Most professors don’t write for the web automatically. Academics like you may use
complicated or dense sentences
jargon / specialized terms
long paragraphs
no headings (or few headings)
Each of these can be found in academic writing, but you should avoid them when writing for your professor website.
I’m going to share with you best practices for writing for your personal website. Take the document you’ve drafted and each time, read through to edit with these changes
Can you simplify this sentence? For instance, if I make this sentence into 2 sentences, will it be easier for people to understand?
Is this word jargon? Is it a specialized term people in my field know but other people may not? Is it a term people in my specialization know, but other people may not? That word or term needs a short definition.
How many sentences is this paragraph? Can I break it into shorter paragraphs to make it easier to read on a mobile phone?
What heading will help someone find what they’re looking for on this particular page? For instance, if I have longer description of my research, what headings can I add to make this easier for someone skimming this page?
Photography and headshots
What images do you want to include on your website? At a minimum I recommend these
cover photo (also called a splash image, header photo, etc.)
a photo of you
If you like taking photos, you may have one already that photos that work for your website.
Many people choose stock images for their cover photo. On my personal website, I have photos I took at the San Francisco Botanic Gardens.
For your headshot, you don’t need to go out and do a professional photo shoot. If you have photos from your work then that’s an option. Selfies are a good option for your headshot too. You just want your photo to be friendly, like of your smiling face. Here are 3 ways to get new photos for your personal website.
Are photos required? No, but it really does help. If you’re uncomfortable with photos, consider making an avatar instead. Whichever photos choose, you need to have the rights or license to share those photos online.
Do you want your academic or scientist website to be super engaging? Try adding a video too!
If you got to the end of this step and you’re like, can you please just do the set-up for me? Yes. Let’s talk about working together on set up of your academic website.
2. Pick a domain name and site title
Once you’ve gathered/written all your content, you want to pick a domain name. Do this before choosing a host because it’s literally going to be the 1st thing most of them ask you to do when you sign-up.
Your domain name is your main website URL, or web address. For instance, the full URL to this page is https://theacademicdesigner.com/2020/how-to-make-an-academic-website
So the domain name for the website is theacademicdesigner.com.
Your site title is what your website is called, in my case, The Academic Designer, which is the name of my company.
For a personal website, my top recommendation for choosing your website domain and title is to use your full name. My personal website is jennifervanalstyne.com (site name: Jennifer van Alstyne).
Using your full name will help your page rank in Google and other search engines. Afterall, the keyword most people will use to find your website when searching, is your name.
An easy way to check if your domain name is in use is by typing it into your internet navigation search bar. If it’s taken a website will show up, and you may need to add a middle initial or keyword (e.g. JenniferSVanAlstyne.com or JenniferVanAlstynePoet.com).
3. Choose a website host
Which website host is best for you will depend on your time, budget and technical skills.
It’s time to set up your website. This is an exciting day, because when you have the content written already, your website can come together quickly.
Start by choosing a theme for your website
Most website hosts have themes or looks to choose from for the design of your website. When choosing a theme for your website look for these 3 things. You want a website that is
mobile responsive, which means your website adapts from desktop to mobile screens well
a clean design with a top menu and social media menu
accessibility-ready, which means the theme has built-in features to help people with disabilities explore your website (Accessibility-ready may be an option depending on your website host)
Once you’ve chosen a theme for your website, you can usually choose things like font and color. For font, choose a sans serif font for your body font. A sans serif font means that you want letters without the little feet. So, no Times New Roman for your body font. You can use a serif font (with the little feet) for your headings font though.
In terms of colors on your website, you want something with a high contrast for easy readability. Dark text on a light background is preferred for accessibility.
Place your content
Once you’ve selected a theme, you’re ready to place your content. Depending on how big your website is, you’ll want to know how to do these things
add a page
place text
insert a URL link
upload a photo
make a header
You may also need to know how to add and edit these site-level items
a menu
social media links
a contact form (Update for 2024: I no longer recommend using contact forms, as they don’t always work across devices/countries)
Titles, tags, and other metadata
When you upload photos and other media to your website, you need to add in information like the title of the photo. There are also other options to add information about your media like Alt Text, a written description of your photo. Providing Alt Text for your photos helps more people understand the photo you’re sharing. Especially people who use screen readers to interact with your website. Alt Text also helps Google’s website crawlers better understand your website, so that it shows up in relevant search results.
When you upload photos or other media to your website, it’s important to check that the metadata and Alt Text are descriptive.
Write descriptive Alt Text for all of the images on your website.
For my splash image of succulents the metadata includes
title of the photo (Succulents)
name of the photo (succulents.jpg)
description of the photo (‘Website header photo of many green echeveria succulents’)
After you’ve placed the writing and photos on your website, preview your website. Check your website for
spelling
formatting
readability
Preview your website on different screen types if you have the option
Try your website on different browsers
Chrome
Firefox
Microsoft Edge
Safari
Ask your friends and family to read over your personal website for you. We often miss our own simple errors. You may learn if something is confusing. For instance, if your family notices a bit of jargon, a term they don’t understand about your research, how would you explain it to them in a phrase or sentence?
You may also learn that something is hard to find. You’d be surprised how many personal websites I’ve come across where it’s difficult to find the name of the person who it’s about. Seriously. I even wrote an article about it for The Social Academic.
6. Is it time to take your website live?
If you sell anything on your website including consulting or editing services, you may be required by law to have a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions page. Look to your country’s regulations about this. You will also need a Privacy Policy and Terms page if you are using Google Analytics or other tracking pixels or tools on your website. Do not take your website live until you have those things.
If that is not the case for you, or if you’ve added those policies…
It’s time to take your website live!
Go ahead and Publish your website.
Congratulations! You have a personal academic website ready to be shared with the world.
7. Share your website
Once your website is live, you need to share it with people.
In the next few weeks, Google will crawl your website (unless you tell it not to, but don’t do that). Then your website will start showing up when people Google your name. But Google and search engines shouldn’t be the only way people find your website.
Announce your website on social media. Invite people to check it out.
Update your social media profiles to include your website address.
Add your new website address to your email signature.
Share your website as a way for people to keep in touch with you after a talk or presentation.
Update your bio to include your website.
And, please share your website with me! Send me a direct message on social media, I’d love to congratulate you on your website personally.
Good luck with your website project!
Well that’s the whole process, step-by-step. Good luck setting up your personal website. Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back and check the steps.
Please share this guide to making your personal academic website with your friends and colleagues. Ask your university library or faculty development office to share it as a resource. This guide has helped professors and grad students around the world make their website a reality.
I hope it helps you too. You’ve got this! Make 2024 your year to launch your personal academic website. You’ll be happy you did.
Feel like you don’t want to do this alone? Get support for your personal academic website
Professors, would you like 1-on-1 support on your personal academic website or their research lab website? Let’s work together on a done-for-you website customized to meet your long-term needs. My most loved website service typically takes 4+ months.
Websites with me are capacity building. When we do it together, you get to “a website ready to take live” with ease. And, you’ll feel confident to make simple changes so you can keep your website updated.
When you write a book, it’s lasting. It’s sharable. Your book is findable online which for professors that means you can help more people with your research, teaching, and the things you care about most. I’m delighted to share this featured interview with you.
Dr. Jane Joann Jones is a book coach for minoritized women professors. She left the tenure track 8 years ago to help you confidently write your book.
Jane says, “You’ve done this research. It’s really meaningful to you. And you wanna see it out in the world.” If you want a book, I want you to have a book! I hope this interview resonates with you.
Welcome to The Social Academic blog and podcast. We’re also on YouTube! I’m Jennifer van Alstyne (@HigherEdPR). Here we talk about managing your online presence as a professor. You can build skills to have a strong digital footprint to share your research and teaching online. And I’m here to help you.
In this interview, Dr. Jane Jones and I talk about
Meet Dr. Jane Jones
Jennifer: Welcome to The Social Academic. Today I’m talking with Dr. Jane Jones of Up In Consulting.
We’re gonna be talking about books. So, authors, please listen up. This one is for you. Dr. Jane Jones, would you please introduce yourself?
Jane: Sure. My name is Jane Jones. I am a New Yorker and I am a book writing coach. I came to book writing after I left my tenure track job. I was an Assistant Professor of Sociology. That’s where I have my PhD, in sociology.
I started out as a developmental editor and then transitioned into coaching. The business I have now is a book coaching business where I work with women in academia who are writing books in humanities and social sciences. I help them get those books done through a combination of developmental editing, coaching, and project management support.
Jennifer: I love that. Now, can I ask, what do you like most about coaching? Why do you like working with people on their books?
Jane: Oh my goodness, there are a lot of reasons actually. I really do love coaching.
One thing that stands out with the coaching side is how much academics already know, but have been socialized to believe they don’t know. Especially women.
Jennifer: Ooh. Especially women. Okay.
Jane: Especially women. Especially Black women, other women of color, They’ve been taught not to trust their own knowledge.
Jennifer: Mm.
Jane: And through coaching, a lot of what I focus on, is helping people realize that you already know a lot about your topic. You already have a lot of expertise. You don’t always have to defer to other scholars, to your dissertation advisor, especially when you’re writing your book. You no longer have to answer to your dissertation advisor. And that you have a lot of the skills already.
To be sure, there are a lot of things that we aren’t taught about publishing. There is a big hidden curriculum around book writing. And exposing that hidden curriculum is very important, while also reinforcing people’s trust in their own knowledge. Being able to do both of those two things at the same time, I think is the most important part of the coaching relationship for me.
What are universities not teaching you about book writing?
Jennifer: I love that because my next question was what are universities kind of not teaching you, right? What are universities not teaching, especially minoritized faculty, about writing books?
It sounds like people do have more knowledge than they’re able to process, maybe admit, or accept of themselves. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Where is that difference between how much we know and how much we really need support?
Jane: I always joke that there’s no Publishing 101. There’s no Book Writing 101.That course is not taught in grad school. I mean, for that matter, Article Writing 101 isn’t either. Those aren’t taught in grad school.
Where people have a lot of knowledge is in their subject matter. In the data you have collected, all of the literature, you’ve read, how you make sense of the literature. People are experts there. You’ve spent your whole graduate career…Because I work with people at all stages of their career from Assistant Professor to Full Professor. You’ve accumulated so much data, number one. And you have so much knowledge. Right? So that is there.
But in terms of questions like, “Well, how is a book different than a dissertation?”
You know, “Structurally, what do I put in my book that wasn’t in the dissertation?”
Or, you know, “How do I create the through line in my book?”
You know, these really, kind of tactical questions about how do I actually do the writing of this type of manuscript? Which is different than an article, and is different than a grant proposal. They’ve never been taught that.
Even though they have all of the information, they don’t know how to get it on paper in a way that is going to be legible for our reader. That’s where the work happens. That’s what we do, and that’s what universities don’t teach people how to do.
Sometimes it’s because people just don’t know how to teach it. It’s kind of like, you write your book for yourself. For many people who write their first book, and if you’re a first book author watching this, if someone comes and asks you what you did, you might be like, “I don’t remember. I just got that done. I was on a tenure timeline, and I put my head down, and I wrote.” And maybe I had a book manuscript workshop. Or, you know, like, I had good friends, or a supportive mentor who read it and gave me feedback. And I wrote, got feedback, wrote, got feedback, and that was it. And then the book was done, right? That doesn’t mean you can then teach that process to somebody else.
So being able to be a little bit on the outside of the process as developmental editor, and with the other developmental editors, you know, who work in the program with me, being on the outside of that process and saying, you know, there are some common things. There are some things that all books have in common. And we’re gonna teach you how to implement and how to learn that craft, the things that are common about the craft of book writing.
We work with people across disciplines. We’re ‘discipline agnostic’ as we like to say. You know, from art historians to people who are more on the side of doing quantitative, big survey research, but writing books. We run the gamut. But even within that, there are things people have in common in their books and in their trials of writing, you know? The experiences they’re having, trying to make enough time to write the book, feeling imposter syndrome, not knowing what to do with feedback, being worried about approaching an acquisitions editor. You know, going back to the hidden curriculum, not knowing how to talk to an acquisitions editor and feeling very intimidated. Those are all things that we help them with that I think aren’t really being talked to them in other places.
People might be exchanging information informally. They’re like, “Oh, my friend published here. They said the editor is really nice.” Or, “They said the editor is really hands-on or not hands-on. So I have this informal knowledge, but I don’t know how to craft an email to an acquisitions editor. Or, strike up a conversation with them at a conference. And I feel very worried to do that.” You know, “I don’t know how to describe my book in one or two sentences so that I could talk to somebody about it at a conference and not spend 10 minutes talking about my book. Which, ultimately I will be, but I don’t have that sharp, quick summary.” Those are things that we help them with, because it could feel very disempowering when you don’t know how to do that.
Again, you have all this great information, but, if you don’t know how to talk to an acquisitions editor, how are you gonna have a book? If you don’t know how to craft a chapter, how are you gonna have a book.
Minoritized women in the academy do more service and mentoring
Jennifer: These are skills that professors can learn. These are skills that are learnable and that you can develop, but because they’re not taught by universities and the people who have experience in them maybe don’t know how to teach these skills, it is amazing that you and your team are there to support them. I’m so happy about that.
And I’m also happy that you work with minoritized faculty, with women. Why is that important to you?
Jane: It’s really important! I just want to go back to one thing, the people who have written books and don’t necessarily know how to teach it. I would add additionally, and kind of looping this into working with women and minoritized faculty is, like, they don’t often have the time to teach somebody elsehow to write a book.
It’s a time consuming process. A book is a multi-year process and people add mentoring like, “I’ll read a chapter for you and give you feedback.” But for someone to give them that structured support over time, faculty are having to publish themselves. They have to do their own service committees, they have their own families. Again, that doesn’t mean that they don’t offer help, but it means that they may not have the time or capacity to give that systematic type of help we do.
I think that’s especially pronounced for women and minoritized faculty because they often have an extra service load. They do more service. We know that statistically. They do more service. They’re doing more care-taking outside of work. Right?
There isn’t always that easy transmission of knowledge from a senior faculty member to a junior faculty member because they’re just as pressed as anybody else. And so are the junior faculty! And we don’t only work with junior faculty, but the majority of our clients are.
They have the same issues like extra service, students who want their mentorship because they’re the only Black person in the department. They’re only person who studies race. They’re the only person who does X research. So they have students who want their mentoring. And all of this creates extra commitments for them.
One thing that we focus on in coaching is helping people prioritize their books when there’s a lot of other things going on. Teaching that craft of writing, but also saying, like, “Hey, this book is really important to you for a lot of reasons. Like, professionally take a tenure promotion. But also because you’ve done this research, it’s really meaningful to you, and you wanna see it out in the world. How do we help you make sure that it stays top of mind?” What do we do to support people so that the book can stay top of mind.
Jennifer: I love that. I feel like my work is really aligned with that actually, because I’m really helping professors and researchers talk about the research and the teaching that they do on online. That way more people can have conversations, so that they can have more collaboration, so that they can get more research funding.
But most of the people that I work with have a lot of anxiety talking about themselves. Do you find that your authors have anxiety talking about their books?
Jane: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. Definitely. And I think that the work you’re doing is so important, ’cause, in my opinion, if you write a book, don’t you want people to read it?
Like, you want it out in the world. Like, you wanna be in conversation with other people. You want people to read it, but you also want to talk to people about it.
Jennifer: Right, yeah. Yeah. Even, the ability to have someone on your team, be that kind of support, not just when you start writing the book, but through the whole process. That’s such an amazing idea that we can’t necessarily get through a mentorship position at your university. Especially if no one is in your field. I love that that support system is there.
It also gives authors an opportunity to have someone that they can talk with about their book. Some of the authors that I work with, I ask, “Who do you talk about your book with?”
And their answer is, “No one. Once I stopped working with my editor, I don’t talk with my colleagues. I don’t talk with my family. I don’t talk with my friends. My book came out seven years ago and I never talk about it.”
That really strikes me as something that I think that, people who work with you, they’re talking about their book. And thinking about it in much larger ways. Because it’s really introspective, and being introspective is hard. I love that you help people with that process and actually understand their motivations for why they’re doing it, who they’re helping. It’s amazing.
Jane: Yeah. Thank you. I think that another part that’s really important is that my programs are group programs.
Jennifer: Ooh.
Jane: And that’s on purpose. Because like you said, it is very introspective. For some people, the solitude, the solitary work, they like it. They’re like, “I like writing solitary. I like being alone with my thoughts.” And that’s great.
Some people are like, “It’s isolating, and I don’t like it, and I feel very alone in the process.” Being with people who are at a similar stage as them, and when I say stage, I don’t mean career-wise, I mean stage of the book. Because people come in, and they’re all at a similar stage of writing, so they’re all kind of going through it together.
“I’m trying to figure out the overarching argument of this book,” or, “I’m writing two of my empirical chapters, the two of my body chapters.” There’s a feeling of, “We’re in it together.”
I spoke to a former client the other day, and she was in Elevate a year ago maybe, and she said, “Our Elevate group still meets on Mondays and Thursdays on Zoom, and we still write together.”
Jennifer: I love that.
Jane: I was like, “Oh, my goodness.” I didn’t even know that they did that. And she’s like, “We kept the time and whoever can make it comes on Mondays and Thursdays and we meet.” Just having that community of people who are in it with you and are like, “I’ve seen you from when you started this book and you weren’t sure what it was about. And now you’re here and we’re just seeing each other’s process and giving each other support that way.”
It’s just awesome because we don’t get a lot of that in academia. We have to be very intentional about cultivating it. It doesn’t just show up for us.
Being able to provide that space where you have peers so you can be like, “I tried that too, and this is what happened when I tried it. “You know, or, “I went through that experience and I came out and I was, like, ‘I did it, and you could do it too.’”
Jennifer: I did it and you can do it too. Just hearing those two sentences, they’re so short. But, it just makes such a difference, especially to the women and minoritized faculty that you most want to help.
Jane: Yeah. I mean just seeing that. ‘Cause you get into it and you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be done with this book.” (Jane laughs). People definitely have that thought,
“I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to finish this.”
“I’ve been avoiding it.”
“I haven’t been working on my book, because I’ve been scared.”
“I got some feedback that put me into a tailspin.”
“I became overwhelmed with other commitments and I feel some shame about it.
“I feel so embarrassed.”
Jennifer: Hmm.
Jane: And reminding them that it happens. It’s disappointing that it happens, but it doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. I was normalizing it and seeing when I did one-on-one, one thing that always happened was people would tell me something, I’d be like, “Oh, that’s really common.”
And they’d be like, “It is?”
And I’d be like, “Yeah, I have other clients who have experienced that.”
And they’re like, “They have?”
Jennifer: (Laughs). Yeah
Jane: So being able to put everyone in the group and be like, “Look, you’re all having this experience.” You are not uniquely incompetent in some way. This is something that happens to a lot of people. Just because we aren’t talking about it on Twitter, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Jennifer: You know, I like when it is talked about on Twitter. I like when people talk about their struggles with writing on Twitter. Because I cheer them on. I’m like, “If you struggle with your writing, you get back to it, even if it’s a year later, two years later, 10 years later, I don’t care. Because I will remember that you were vulnerable and open about something you were going through. And I wanna cheer you on and I wanna hear about things when they’re not so good too.” So I really like vulnerability.
I love that people have a safe space to do that in your program. But I also encourage people, if you’re struggling with something, being open about it on social media can help spark new ideas, tools, and resources that you can use. But also new collaborations and ideas that could help spurn your research in another way. I mean, there’s just so much possibility besides hearing from other people, “Yes. I went through that too.” So yeah, I like that idea of being open about it.
Jane: Yeah, to be open about it! You know, it’s interesting. We gravitate to what is other people’s achievements and our failures, right? So, you finish a chapter and you’re like, “Yeah, but it’s not as good as I thought it would be.” Or, “Yeah, but it took me two months longer than I thought it would.” There’s always a diminishing.
Jennifer: Mm.
Jane: And convert on the flip side, they talk about other people who are like, “Well, that person finished their chapter so much faster than I did.” Or, “That person, you know, did this.” And it’s like, well, maybe they did. Maybe you don’t know the whole story. But it’s interesting, in our brains we kind of put everyone else as, “Well, they did it better or faster than I did. And when I did it, it was a mess.” And to coach around that and be like what is the story you are telling about your progress? And, is that story serving you? Because often it’s not. Saying, “I wrote my chapter, but…” And then using some type of diminishing, diminishing it in some way, how is that helping you?
Jennifer: Hmm.
Jane: Why would we emphasize that part of the story? What does it accomplish? It doesn’t accomplish anything besides making you feel like crap. It doesn’t accomplish anything. It doesn’t make you write faster. You can’t go back in time.(Jennifer laughs) You can’t go back in time and write the chapter faster.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah.
Jane: So why would we talk about it so much? But we do, because sometimes we’re like, “Well, I don’t wanna seem arrogant.” Or, “It’s because I don’t believe that this is worthy of celebrating because it didn’t happen the exact way I wanted it to.” So where are the opportunities to kind of neutralize some of that language, so that people aren’t…
Jennifer: But you can find positives in it, right? Like, maybe that extra time gave you opportunity to realize something new. Maybe it was good that you didn’t write it as fast as you thought you might have been able to. There’s so much self-talk that can be negative that can be harmful for ourselves.
Jane: Yeah, there’s a lot of negative self-talk. Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah. – I’ve definitely done that. I’m a creative writer and I’ve totally done that to my own. I didn’t write that fast enough or I didn’t write as much as so-and-so, yeah. It’s never helpful. It’s never helpful.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like our running critic. And sometimes, it’s something my coach always says, “We can’t always get the critic to completely go away. We can put them in the backseat of the car, and be like, ‘You go back there. You’re not driving this car anymore. You’re not even in the back seat, but, like, the third row.’” (Jennifer laughs) You know, “We’re putting you back there. Like, I recognize that I may not be at a point where I can get rid of you, but I’m not going to give you authority over this ride. You don’t have the wheel. You’re back there.”
Jennifer: Still in the car, right? Can’t kick it out entirely. I mean, sometimes we can’t get control over it.
Jane: Still in the car. Like, you realize, you’re not wrong for having these thoughts. Like, they’re natural. And we’ve also been socialized to believe it’s not rigorous enough. It’s not fast enough. Publish or perish. There’s a lot of socialization at hand that is part of the reason why people have these thoughts.
As a coach it would be irresponsible for me to go in and just be like, “Oh no, you shouldn’t think any of this ever again.” Because as a sociologist, I know how strong the socialization is. As a coach I know that just makes you feel bad about having the thought. Then you feel bad because you didn’t write fast enough according to your standard. Then you feel bad that you’re judging yourself. And then you just feel doubly bad. So it’s like, “Okay, let’s just, like, take it back.”
Jennifer: Get out of that spiral.
Jane: Yeah. Let’s get out of the spiral. And, it’s okay that you had that thought. It’s okay that you feel bad. We don’t want you to feel bad indefinitely.
Jennifer: Hmm. I like that. We don’t want you to feel bad indefinitely.
Jennifer: Tell me more about Elevate. Who should join?
Jane: Everyone. I’m just kidding. (Jane and Jennifer laugh).
Jennifer: You said that people in the cohort are all in a similar place writing their book. When is it right to join your program Elevate?
Jane: Okay, so Elevate is a group editing and coaching program. We have a curriculum that we walk you through the
craft of writing a book
project management behind writing a book
mindset issues behind writing a book.
So much of what slows us down is our own thoughts. Like, “I’m not ready to write this.” “I don’t know what decision to make.” “So and so said this about my chapter, so I’m going to feel bad about it and just ignore it.” “I’m gonna avoid. I don’t wanna look at the feedback, so I’m just gonna avoid it.”
Those are the three domains we work in the craft of writing, project management, and mindset. We do that through a curriculum. We have lessons the same way you would in any course. We have editorial feedback, so you submit your writing for feedback twice a month.
And we have a lot of mindset coaching that I coach people hard, (Jennifer laughs) which I think is what most Elevate alumni would say. Like, “Jane really coaches us. Like, she really pushes us.”
Jennifer: Right.
Jane: I push you in a way that not like, “Write your book faster, write your book faster,” but rather, “Let’s get to the bottom of why you’re having these feelings about your book. Let’s get to it and figure it out,” type of coaching.
Because we’re academics, we’re in our brains so much. When it gets into having emotions, we’re, like, “Oh, no, we’re rational. We can’t really think about that.”
I used to be that person too. Oh, no.(Jennifer laughs) I hate that, all that emotion stuff. That’s not gonna work for me. Well, I kind of need to confront it, because you and your book are gonna be together for a very long time.
Like you were saying, like, as you write it and then after you write it, it’s not going anywhere. You should figure out how to enjoy it. To find pleasure in the process of writing it and be excited about it.
It’s just like any other thing. You’re not gonna be excited about your book 24 hours a day, but you wanna get to a point where you’re more excited and motivated than you are demoralized and stressed.
Jennifer: Hmm, mm-hm.
Jane: In the program, we go 24 weeks. We go through those three themes one by one. People who join, all women, they’re normally at a stage in their book where they are figuring out the big overarching picture of the book and the structure of the book.
Some people come in and they haven’t written a lot yet. They have all of their data collected, most of their literature read. You might need to go back and collect a little bit more data, but, we want you to really be past that stage. Some people come in and they haven’t written a lot.
Some people come in and they’ve written a lot and they’re just like, “I’ve been writing and writing, but I still don’t have a really clear through line,” or, “I still don’t know my argument.” And that’s fine, because people’s processes are different. Some people like to get a lot of words on paper and then go back and kind of orient themselves.
We advocate you creating the foundation first and then building your house. (Jennifer laughs) So people normally come in when they want that support. What we do first is teach people how to write your book overview, how to write your book’s framework and then create an outline for the entire book. And then they start writing chapters.
Normally within the program you can come out with a couple of chapter drafts if you have the time to commit, and you will know what your book is about, how you’re going to write it. You know how it’s going to unfold over time. And then you get to work.
Jennifer: You have a plan in place. You have the mindset that you need to make that plan actually done, like, to get your book done. I love that.
Jane: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer: Oh, if people want more support, you help them with that too. Like, beyond writing their book, is that correct?
Jane: We focus on books, but we have an alumni program for Elevate. We don’t expect anyone to write a book in six months. (Jennifer and Jane laugh). That is not what we do. We do not make pie in the sky promises.
We have an alumni program and people often come back and do the alumni program, which is another six months. There we really focus on more now you’ve done a lot of the deep work, the deep thinking in Elevate. Now we are helping you get a lot of words on paper. People are doing the writing and getting the body chapters, I call them ‘the empirical chapters.’ But I know people also have ‘theory chapters,’ so I don’t want anyone to be like, “What about the theory chapter?”
We focus on getting chapters done or revising because some people will take Elevate, go off for a little while and work independently, and then come back and be like, “I have a couple of chapters done.” And we’re like, “Great, let’s start revising them.”
Jennifer: I’m glad I asked you about that because I felt like there might be some people who are like, “Oh, I need a little bit more help than that. Is there an option?” I’m glad that there’s an alumni program that supports you with continuing that process. That’s amazing.
What else should people know or consider about Elevate? Because your new cohort is opening up again soon.
Jane: Yeah, so we accept people who are writing first, second, third books. I think initially when we ran the program, it was very much for people who were transforming dissertations into books. And we have gotten a substantial number of people who are writing second books, which are a different challenge because you don’t have that scaffolding of the dissertation. Even if your first book is dramatically different from the dissertation, which many are, the book is not a revised dissertation. It is like a caterpillar to butterfly.
But the second book just poses different challenges, and we support people who are writing their second book, their third book, because that foundational work of creating the overview, the framework, the outline, you need to do that every time. It’s not like you write the first book and you’re like, “Well I’m an expert on book writing now, so I don’t need any help.” That’s not how it works. (Jennifer laughs). And even experts get support.
So it’s not a matter that it’s a remedial type of program. That’s not what it is. It’s not, for, “Oh the people who don’t know how to write books.” No, it’s for people who wanna write books with supportive community, expert editorial feedback and coaching to help them write the book with less stress, a better support system, a clear foundation for the book. So that they can make progress with more ease.
Writing a book is a complicated thing. It should be because you’re dealing with complicated ideas and all sorts of interesting data. And it’s not easy. But there can be more clarity and momentum in the process than what there currently is for a lot of people.
Jennifer: I think that this is such a wonderful gift that you can give to yourself, especially if this is, like, your second, third, or fourth book. Like, why not make this time easier and better?
Jane: The majority of the people who work with us pay through their universities. We have a significant number of people, and some people pay out of pocket. We have people who are like, “I wanna make this investment because my book’s important to me and I don’t wanna twiddle my thumbs…”
Jennifer: (Laughs). Good. So if you are listening to this, if you’re watching us on YouTube or reading the blog, know that this is a program that’s there to support you and that you can pay for it out of pocket or you can request funds from your university. I hope that you sign up for the wait list.
Jane: You can apply for Elevate. The application is just an application. It’s not a commitment to join the program. We look at your application, because one thing about the program is that we wanna make sure that you’re a good fit for the program.
We also wanna make sure the program’s a good fit for you. If we think that you’re not at the right stage, if there’s something about your research that we feel that we can’t support you…For instance, we had someone who’s writing a memoir and we’re like, “We don’t really edit a lot of memoirs.” If we feel like the program is not a good fit for you, we will tell you because we only want people in it who can commit and who we can help.
That is the point of going in and applying and possibly talking to me about the process if you have a lot of questions, that we wanna make sure that it works for everyone. Because it’s a big commitment. And also, a book is a big deal. If you’re gonna get support, you wanna make sure you’re getting the right support at the right time.
Instagram Live about finding your book audience on social media
Jennifer: I love that. Thank you so much for joining me for this interview, and for everyone listening, I do wanna let you know that Jane and I did an Instagram Live where we talked about your book audience versus platform.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Social Academic! And thank you so much, Dr. Jane Jones, for joining me.
Jane Joann Jones is an academic book coach who helps minoritized scholars get the feedback & support they need to confidently write their books. Jane strives to be the coach she wished for when she was on the tenure track.
In her eight years as an editor and coach, Jane has successfully helped dozens of academic authors create and execute a writing plan and ultimately write their books, confidently. Her clients have published with presses including Oxford, Princeton, Bloomsbury, University of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, and UNC. Through her work, Jane has restored minoritized academics’ faith in their writing abilities and their place in the academic world.
When she’s not challenging the status quo in academia, you can find Jane sipping a craft bourbon, on the rocks, while experimenting with a new cooking recipe. She also enjoys visiting museums for only one hour, devouring cooking shows, and impromptu dance parties to the tunes of Lizzo and Queen Bey. If you happen to be strolling through her New York neighborhood, you might see her at Lucille’s, her local café, drinking an oat milk latté with a raspberry donut and a good book.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
