RGS-IBG Research Groups and Social Media

James Cheshire

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

james.cheshire@ucl.ac.uk

@spatialanalysis

About Me

• Lecturer at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).

• Secretary GIScience Research Group• Enjoy blogging for both spatial.ly and

mappinglondon.co.uk.• Twitter: @spatialanalysis and @maplondon

The Value of Social Media

• Promotion• Interaction

General Principles

• Quality not quantity of followers important.• @Maplondon has fewer than ½ the followers that

@spatialanalysis has but I would argue is more influential.

• Not all your followers are real people.• People who don’t follow you may still find content

– Via Google or other users.

Why people will follow: Name

Why people will follow: Affiliation/ Endorsement

• Not to be underestimated – there is a lot of junk out there so people are after credible people– RGS-IBG offers this.

• Tweets need to be on topic.• Mentions from influential tweeters• Who you follow/ are being followed by.

Why people will follow: Content

• Relevant– To your RG/ topic. No-one cares what you had for

lunch!

• Original• Consistent- regular postings• Interpretable

Conventions

• #hashtags – used for topics/ themes.– Good for conferences. “Backchannel”– Naming rules apply– Also be consistent

• Retweets – RT @spatialanalysis• Modified tweet- MT @spatialanalysis• Hat Tip – HT @spatialanalysis• Conversations - @spatialanalysis

– Followers of both people see this in their feed, everyone can see them if clicking on profile.

• Good way of interacting/ including followers

Maintaining Interest

Aggregators- RSS Feeds

• http://blogs.casa.ucl.ac.uk/

• http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa

• A great way to get content to your websites without having to write it.

• Can be from RG member’s blogs or elsewhere.

• Seek permission.

Tools: Tweetdeck

Final Thoughts

• Long term commitment• Have a few people run the account.• Encourage members to tweet your RG account.

– You can then RT their work.

• Limit who you follow to key individuals.