This guide, prepared and researched by Jenna Richards (Web and Digital Communications Officer at
the University of Exeter), accompanies the presentation of the same name available at:
http://prezi.com/ncnhtpybilbg/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
It was produced for the GW4 Communication for Collaboration Conference and belongs to a wider
set of resources to support research collaboration, which are available for GW4 researchers to use at:
www.gw4.ac.uk
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Contents
Effective digital communications
Introduction
What makes effective digital communications?
Be realistic about how much you can do
Create communications for your intended audience
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3
4
4
Planning and writing content for websites
Introduction
How people read on the web
Identifying the objective and purpose of your pages
Identifying keywords
Writing for websites
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5
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6
6
Search engine optimisation
Introduction
How does Google work?
How does Google rank your website?
Websites and SEO
Social media and SEO
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Social media platforms
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Academia.edu
ResearchGate
Google Scholar
Google+
Flickr
YouTube
Social media management tools
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Effective digital communications
Introduction
When creating online communications for research, or any other area, the key thing to consider is
your target audience.
Before we produce any form of digital communication we must consider:


The needs of our target audience.
The way our target audience use the web.
People rarely venture onto the web to browse aimlessly. Even when using social media they often
have a definite purpose in mind: this may be to gather information, answer a question, complete a
task or just to be social.
It is up to the writer to provide digital communications that are:





Relevant to the target audience
Trustworthy
Easy for the target audience to understand
Appealing
And, that deliver information clearly and quickly to the target audience
While most digital communications will be written there is also scope to produce audio, video and
image led content that can be shared via social media and embedded in websites and blogs.
What makes effective digital communications?
Effective digital communications will be:

Necessary and helpful. You need to know who your target audience are and what you
want to achieve with the communication. There are many things your communications could
be looking to achieve such as: a click on a link in a Tweet, a like on Facebook, a response to a
question on LinkedIn, clicks on your publication on Academia.edu, a comment on you blog,
an email from someone browsing your website and more…

Appropriate for your target audience. The communication will use their language, and
the keywords they are looking for and understand. Using appropriate keywords for your
audience will also help your target users find your digital communications when they search.

Simple. The communication needs to be understood by all your targeted users, but beware
of being patronising.
Generally speaking, shorter is better and avoid lots of flowery language. Microblogging
services like Twitter only allow you 140 characters forcing you to be concise.
Which of these two sentences do you find easier to read?
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE

o
The Web Team at the University of Exeter have developed an innovative, valuable
and informative digital communication training course for researchers called
Communicating research online, which includes some pre-reading and a two hour
face-to-face training session, both of which include fantastic guidance, top tips and
good research communication examples.
o
Communicating research online is training programme for researchers, developed by
the University of Exeter Web Team, which contains guidance, tips and examples.
Direct. Stick to the point, provide only what is relevant. Use vocabulary that is clear and
direct, and will be understood by as many of your target audience as possible.
Keep sentences straightforward within the topic you are writing about.
Be informal and personal to connect with the user, but be aware of the medium you are
using and tailor your voice accordingly.

Error-free. Errors in any online communications look unprofessional, and will lose you
credibility with your readers. This includes factual errors, poor spelling (including
Americanisations) and bad grammar. Make sure you proofread everything before you press
the send / submit / approve / publish button. Mistakes look just as bad on social media as
they do on web pages.
Ensure any information you put on the web is correct, do not put it online if you are unsure
of its accuracy. You are legally responsible for anything you publish on social media sites.

Appropriate in style and tone of voice. Your tone and voice can be much more
informal on social media than on institutional web pages. But all communications should be
professional and remember you are representing your University – even if you have a social
media profile disclaimer that says ‘views my own’.
Be realistic about how much you can do
There is a limit to how much content you will be able to manage and how many channels you can
keep up to date. Be realistic about what you set-up so you know you will be able to keep on top of it.
Most social media will require daily updates and blogs weekly updates.
Create communications for your intended audience and purpose
Keep your audience and the medium you are using in mind at all times.
Regardless of medium try to avoid using complicated language. Even if you are targeting other
academics remember that not all of them will have the same level of expertise you do. Flowery or
academic language can be more appropriate on a blog than other mediums but even then be very
aware of your target audience. Try not to use internal jargon that readers may not understand, or
acronyms/abbreviations that will be meaningless to them without explanation.
It is easy to find yourself telling readers what you want them to think, but your digital
communications will be more effective if you write about what they want to know.
4
Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Planning websites and writing effective website content
Introduction
It is easy to set up a social media profile or a blog and start producing digital content for these
mediums without giving it too much thought. You can use a bit of trial and error to see what works
and what doesn’t as you build your following over time.
Websites are a completely different beast and need careful consideration and planning before you
dive in. Content needs to be carefully crafted with consideration paid to search engine optimisation,
how the pages might fit into the overall structure of an institutional website, the objectives of each
page, and what elements are making up each page.
Exercise
Think about the way you use web pages when trying to find information.
Pretend you need to renew your passport: Look on the web for how to renew your passport. Note
down what you do along the way. Think about how you navigated to the destination page? What
keywords were you looking for? How did you pick out these words amongst others on a page? How
much do you actually read as you worked your way through to an answer?
How do people read on the web?
Website users tend to skim and scan on the web. They want to read only what they need to satisfy
their main purpose in visiting your site. They’ll scan around a page picking out key words, sentences,
headings, links and paragraphs of interest, and skim over text that doesn’t interest them. They don’t
start reading word-for-word until they find something relevant to them.
Identifying the objective and purpose of your pages
If a page does not have a clearly definable objective and purpose for being on the web, you don’t
need it. If when you create the page it does not meet the objective, do not publish it. You will save
yourself a lot of work by thinking this way!
When establishing a clear objective for each page some questions to consider are:
 What will the page achieve for you and your readers?
 Who is the audience?
 What do you want them to know?
 What do you want them to do as a result of reading the page?
A clear objective might be:
“This webpage needs to give people information about our Science Technology and Culture key
theme because we need to provide evidence of the impact of the research we are doing in this area.
We also need to tell people who to contact if they would like more information about the theme.
Your objective will also give you key points to be covered in the text – for the objective above, the
key points may be:
 What is the Science Technology and Culture Key theme?
 What has been the impact of research under this theme?
 Who is the theme leader?
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE

How do I contact the theme leader?
If it is hard to come up with a clear objective, or key points, then a web page is probably unnecessary.
Ensure your copy meets this objective
When writing, keep your objective in mind at all times. If you find you are straying from that
objective, focus yourself and delete what is not needed.
In the Science Technology and Culture example above, you may find yourself writing about
academics who are members of the theme and their research that is not directly related to the area.
Why and how the theme was set up or about the overall Humanities and Social Sciences strategy.
None of this additional information fits the objective, so is surplus to requirements. If you think you
really need this information ask yourself – do my target audience really need to know this? Do they
care?
Identifying keywords
Once you have a mental picture of what your users are looking for and have worked out the
objectives of your page you can tailor the page content to include keywords and phrases they may
be searching for (this will also help with search engine optimisation). If the user does not find their
keywords on your site, they may conclude that the content is not there.
To do this find out which words your users will search for and use these, and not your own internal
vocabulary. You can:
 Brainstorm words that are applicable to your content. Think about possible synonyms.
 Think about the words your users use when you speak directly to them by phone, email or
face-to-face?
 Ask a sample of your target audience what words they would be looking for on your web
pages.
 Take a look at competitors or similar research web pages and use the same keywords as on
those pages, particularly those that rank highly on search engine results.
Writing for websites
As with all digital communication keep it short and simple. Generally it is recommended that you do
not have more than 500 words per page. If your page is long, people are almost certainly not going
to read all of it.
Keep paragraphs short. Blocks of text more than 15 lines long are too long. Keep to one idea per
paragraph, with two or three sentences per paragraph.
Keep your content simple and direct. Compare the following two sentences:

To consult with one of our trained advisors who can offer friendly and informative support 24
hours a day, simply call the following number and follow the instructions on the pre-recorded
message…

For 24/7 help or support, call us on…
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Capture interest
If the information your target audience need/want to read is at the very of the top they will leave
your site more knowledgeable and content.
Use keywords your intended audience will be looking for – especially in the headings and the first
few paragraphs. This has two beneficial effects:
1. It makes it easier for the search engines to find your page.
2. It ensures that readers know that they have reached their desired page.
Use appropriate headings
Whether surfing the internet for leisure, research or work users spend an average of two seconds
scanning a page and working out if it’s right for them. So make it easy for them to know they’re in
the right place. Let your headings act as signposts to information by using the keywords your
audience uses.
Use headings to:
 Separate sections of information on a page to provide a logical structure.
 Make text more scanable by breaking it up visually.
 Describe the content that follows.
 Encourage you user to do something, use calls to action if appropriate.
Make headings short and direct
 Long headings are hard for readers to scan.
 People often only read the first word or two of a heading. Shorter headings make the
keywords more prominent.
Proofread
Do not skim your copy, carefully read every word. When proofreading, ask yourself:
 Does the copy flow – does it read well?
 Are there any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors?
 Is the copy consistent in voice, tone and layout with the rest of the site?
7
Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Introduction
At a very basic level SEO is about increasing the chances of your website appearing high up in search
results; a high search engine ranking will generally mean more traffic to your website.
We are going to focus on how Google works because this is the most popular search engine.
How does google work?
A spider crawls the web and saves what it finds to a big database. When you search using Google,
Google searches their database for your keywords and displays what it finds on a search results page.
How does Google rank your site?
Google uses hundreds of factors to rank you site and it is quite secretive about how exactly it works.
Some of the most important factors are detailed below.
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Websites and SEO
From an SEO perspective good web content must supply a demand for your target audience and be
linkable. You also need to pay careful consideration to your page title because this is what will be
displayed in search results and is often what other sites will use to link to your page. Some of the
easiest SEO factors to manipulate are:
Keywords
Writing you web content using the keywords you target audience are using as search terms can help
drive traffic to your website.
The most helpful places to position your keywords for both humans browsing the site and search
engine robots are:
 Page titles: these appear in the title bar of the browser
 Breadcrumb trails;
 Headings and subheadings;
 The first paragraph or two;
 Link text: use link text that describes the page it links to.
But beware that putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labelled as a
spammer; search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of keyword-stuffing.
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Links
Use internal links on your web pages and if you have multiple web presences (website, blog, social
media) make sure they all link to each other. Also ensure you use search engine friendly link text on
your pages. Use text descriptive of the link and never use the word ‘here’.
Urls
If your website urls begin with your institutions domain name eg, www.exeter.ac.uk you already
have an advantage in terms of search engine ranking because University sites are ranked as some of
the most trustworthy on the web. However when creating the rest of you url try to make it
descriptive of what it is pointing to and not too long.
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/feature/arctic/ is much better than
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/newsandevents/news/title_374721_en.html.
Social media and SEO
Having a social media profile can also help with SEO. As well as building traffic to your website or
blog Google is now looking to social media as a signal of an article’s authority and relevance.
If thousands of people are sharing it via social media then chances are you have written something
pretty good. To help get more engagement with your content you can:
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Engage with big players: Get to know the big players in your niche by casually building a
rapport with them on your chosen social network. Later on you can ask them to share your
content.
Add separate value: Share information and facts on social media that don’t appear on
your blog or website. Think of it as a separate resource for people to tap in to.
Share others: The more content you share from other relevant blogs and websites the
more likely they are to share your stuff.
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Social media platforms
There are hundreds of social media platforms with each one specialising in something different,
from a modern take on networking to photo sharing. Some of the most popular are detailed below.
Platform
About
Twitter
If you have updates, questions, opinions or breaking news
Twitter is a way to reach out to people. It is a constantly
moving platform that allows you to connect and engage
with potentially millions of people across the globe. A good
Twitter presence could even help you display impact.
www.twitter.com
Update
frequency
At least daily
(multiple
times)
A Twitter account does not have to be exclusively for your
research you can have a personal / professional account.
Once you’ve set up an account you can start to follow
relevant people. To do this:





Use Twitter’s search to find named colleagues,
friends, research groups or institutions.
Search for keywords to find accounts of interest.
Eg, if you field is artificial intelligence a search for
that term could yield people with similar interests.
Follow the people Twitter recommend on your
profile page.
Follow people who post interesting tweets that you
want to pass on or retweet.
Look at who your followers’ follow.
You can use twitter to:

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

Showcase your published work. But make sure you
are not giving away any confidential information or
intellectual property before you do so.
Provide information about your research project,
such as, key milestones.
Provide information and comment on
developments in the area as a whole.
Tweet about and provide commentary from
conferences.
Twitter uses hashtags to categorise tweets. They can help
you discover news, information and other researchers in
your discipline. People watch hashtags as well as profiles so
they can help you engage with a wider community. It is
common for conferences to have an associated hashtag.
Live tweeting conferences is a great service for those who
can't attend and is another way to build your profile.
11
Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Platform
About
Facebook
Facebook is mainly a platform for communicating with
friends rather than a professional network. Unlike Twitter it
is it not possible to manage a personal professional profile.
You may find your target audience are not willing to engage
using Facebook.
www.facebook.com
Update
frequency
Daily
However if you are targeting a particularly young or public
audience Facebook does provide tools such as groups and
pages where you can share details of your research.
LinkedIn
www.LinkedIn.com
If you have a personal Facebook profile you may also want
to share your publications with your friends – it is likely you
will have friends who work in similar areas as yourself so
your publications may be of interest to them.
LinkedIn is a networking site which can be used to
demonstrate competence and expertise. It includes groups
and discussions where you can discuss your interests,
provide expert opinions, ask for advice, ask and answer
questions.
A LinkedIn profile should summarise your professional
expertise and accomplishments. Make sure you:




At least
weekly
You can post
Twitter or
Facebook
updates to
LinkedIn
Include your department, discipline and institution
to make it easy for you to be found in search.
Share your latest research.
Swap recommendations with colleagues and
collaborators.
Follow the company pages of industry collaborators
and connect with their employees.
You can use LinkedIn to:




Stay in touch with colleagues, collaborators and
partners past and present.
Find experts and ideas using LinkedIn Answers and
Groups.
Participate in discussions by responding to existing
comments, providing an insight or opinion or even
asking a thought-provoking question to generate
additional comments. You can also ‘Like’ and Share’
these discussions with your connections.
Start your own conversation by posing a question,
asking for help or advice or posting a relevant and
interesting article or resource for the group’s
benefit.
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Platform
About
Academia.edu
Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share
research, monitor analytics around the impact of their
research, and track the research of academics they follow.
Academia.edu has more than 9,000,000 academics signed
up, who add around 2,5000,000 papers a month.
www.academica.edu
The platform is similar to Facebook. It allows people to
search by name, research interests and universities. You
can update your status, upload your academic papers, list
your research interests and follow others with similar areas
of research. It also notifies you when someone views your
profile or papers.
ResearchGate
www.researchgate.net
You can follow users who do not follow you. Your profile
includes your areas of interest, or research areas, so you
are notified when anybody adds info in those areas (even if
you do not follow them).
ResearchGate is platform that drives collaboration by
connecting a global scientific community.
You can enter your publications either by an author-match
tool, by accessing your bibliographic manager (Reference
Manager, EndNote, BibTex, etc), or by entering publication
details manually.
The site gives each researcher a score for impact, and
calculates impact points for their departments.
You can follow specific researchers or topics based on a
hierarchical subject scheme. Discussion forums are
presented in the form of research-oriented questions and
answers.
Update
frequency
At least
monthly
although
more will
lead to
better
engagement
When you
have
something
to share.
The more
you post the
more
engagement
you are
likely to
build.
You can use ResearchGate to:




Google Scholar
scholar.google.co.uk
Share you publications
Connect and collaborate with colleagues
Ask questions
Get stats about views, downloads and citations of
your research
Google Scholar provides a way to keep track of citations to
your articles. You can check who is citing your publications,
graph citations over time, and compute several citation
metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it
may appear in Google Scholar results when people search
for your name.
When you
publish
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research
COMMUNICATING RESEARCH ONLINE
Platform
About
Google+
Google+ is the second-largest social media site in the world
but has limited use in the UK.
plus.google.com
Update
frequency
Daily
The platform includes google platforms such as Hangouts
and Communities, and allows integration with Google news.
Much Twitter you can follow someone and see all the
activity that he or she publishes publicly.
Google is changing the way some if its services work and
that could force more people onto Google+. For example
you can no longer post a comment on YouTube unless you
are signed in to Google+.
Flickr
www.flickr.com
Flickr is a photo sharing platform but is not a widely used
social media platform in academic circles. You can share
images and connect with the wider Flickr community.
At least
monthly
Your institution may have channels you can contribute to.
YouTube
www.youtube.com
YouTube is a video sharing platform that allows people to
subscribe to, share and comment on your videos. The key
to success on YouTube is to feature your research in an
unforgettable way.
At least
monthly
Your institution may have channels you can contribute to.
Social media management tools
If you set up multiple social media accounts tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to
manage the channels more effectively by posting to multiple places at one time. These tools also
enable you to import Twitter lists so you can view multiple lists in one place; and set up searches and
hashtag tracking so you can monitor mentions of your research area.
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Jenna Richards, Web and Digital Communications Officer, Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Exeter
Twitter: Research: @UofE_Research