The social biology professor: Effective strategies for social media engagement

Abstract

Evolutionary biology and ecology have always been collaborative enterprises, benefitting enormously from active communication of ideas among traditional academic networks of peers. The Internet age, with its thriving online social networks, offers new tools that can help our current generation of biologists to collaborate, and communicate with the public, more effectively. Having a dynamic web presence, being part of an active blogging, Facebook, or Google+ community, and being a strategic tweeter can help your research, teaching, and service programs. Below we outline how to be a strategically savvy and active social media scientist, and discuss some of the pitfalls to avoid wasting time. We highlight some ecologists and evolutionary biologists who are active in social media to help you understand the many ways social media can help you in your academic life.