Make your work more visible to other researchers and members of the public by listing your publications or discussing your research on social media websites.
For more information, see Newcastle University Library's excellent guide on Social Media for Research.
Academia.edu
"Academics use Academia.edu to share their research, monitor deep analytics around the impact of their research, and track the research of academics they follow." (Description from website) Analytics provided include the number of views of your profile, number of views of your documents, and number of "followers" you have. Sign up for a free account.
LinkedIn
A professional networking site. A basic account is free, but with a Premium account, you can view information about who has visited your profile, how many times you appear in search results, the number of times your profile is viewed, the top keywords people are using to find your profile, and more.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate's purpose is to "help researchers build reputation and accelerate scientific progress." An RG score is offered, which "presents ResearchGate members with a new way to build, understand, and measure their scienfitic reputation. The score is calculated based on how researchers interact with each other's content. Whether publication, raw data, topic question or answer, anything researchers contribute to the network becomes a factor in their RG Score." (Description from website) ResearchGate offers free membership. Statistics provided include number of views, downloads and citations to your work.
Vitae
Sponsored by The Chronicle of Higher Education. "Vitae offers membership in a growing community of academics; a free dossier service to manage your job search; the best connections for finding your next job or your next candidate; and an ideal place to spotlight your life’s work." (Description from website) Sign up for a free account.
Facebook
"Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them." (Description from website)
Google+
"Google Plus allows for highly selective networking by letting you share posts only with specific friends, or with set groups of friends called circles; engage your circles in an online conversation using messages containing links, images and video." (Source: What is Google Plus?)
Mention
"Create alerts for your brand, your industry, your company, your name or your competitors and be informed in real-time about any mentions on the web and social web. . . Get a snapshot of your mentions by source, language, and over a selected period of time. Generate reports and export data to compare yourself with your competitors." (Description from website)
reddit
"reddit is a social news website where users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the reddit home page. The site has discussion areas where users may discuss the posted links, and vote for or against others' comments. . . Users who submit articles which other users like and subsequently "vote up" receive "karma", points which a user receives as a reward for submitting interesting articles" (Source: Mashable)
Topsy
"Topsy is a realtime search engine powered by the Social Web. Unlike traditional web search engines, Topsy indexes and ranks search results based upon the most influential conversations millions of people are having every day about each specific term, topic, page or domain queried." (Description from website) Search Topsy for links, videos, tweets, photos, videos and "influencers" on topics you select. View analytics that graph the number of tweets per day on topic(s) you choose in order to monitor social trends.
Twitter
"Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations." (Source: Social Media)
