For many years now there’s been a trend in university libraries to focus on the provision of e-books and online resources over physical publications. This is especially true in recent times as university libraries seem to be moving towards a space to study rather than a place to find knowledge. Continue reading
Category Archives: Blog
The perils of academic conference accounts
It’s quite the trend in academia these days to set up a series of ‘conference accounts’ on social media to promote said conference and bring together all related materials. However, these accounts are rarely (if ever) worthwhile and can actually detract from what should be your primary marketing goal; namely to promote the work of the wider organisation to which your conference is attached. Continue reading
Top tips to promote your content on Twitter
I’ve been blogging again! This time on Hey Millennials, where I’ve shared some of my top tips on how to promote your work via Twitter. My tips include:
- Don’t forget the value of face-to-face.
- Consider your audience.
- Quality counts.
- Target your messages.
- Build your network.
Robot Wars S3, and implications for future warfare
Series three of the new-look Robot Wars has come to an end, and with it, one of the best series to date. While fans of the show will have certainly enjoyed some of the most intense, destructive robot battles seen in the show’s long history, the final ended with a deserving victor, proving that reliability and driver skill still trump money and new tech.
Warning: this blog contains spoilers. Continue reading
Why are academics so obsessed with posters?
I’ve been involved in higher education for some time now – both as a student and an employee – and still to this day it surprises me just how obsessed some people are with posters.
And by posters here I don’t mean posters to stick on the wall; no, rather I mean posters to send out by email or for users to download from social media or a website. Got a conference coming up? Make a poster and send it to your mailing lists. Got an event? Make a poster and upload it to your blog.
But the thing is, pdf posters just aren’t made for digital media. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Posters are not SEO-friendly. Their content is not searchable online.
- Errors are difficult to correct. If you have a change of date or change of venue, you can’t just go out and edit all the posters you’ve already sent out into the ether.
- Posters are not mobile-friendly. Large files are slow to download and impact on a user’s data allowance. They also don’t make for easy reading on a mobile device.
- Posters can be time-consuming to create. They are not an efficient means of communication and can often be overlooked by a time-starved audience.