For the enthusiast, social media platforms are a way of broadening their horizons, making contact with like-minded people across the world and sharing information in a fast and targeted manner. For their opponents, the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and the myriad other channels inhabiting the social media landscape are useless time-wasting devices that distract attention from essential tasks.

So who’s right? Like all tools, the value of social media lies in how you use it. The University uses different channels in various ways — how could you use the channels available to your advantage?

Think about your potential audience and the kind of information they will find useful. Who are you trying to communicate with — current students, potential students, colleagues, peers? Rather then thinking — “I want to tell them X, what’s the best way to do that?” — consider what your audience wants or needs. If you’re a lecturer, your students can access course notes and timetables through the portal, but they might value podcasts of lectures, a blog of your opinions on wider research in the field or a network of like-minded students at other institutions.

The University’s most successful explorations into social media reflect this thinking. Video journalist Brady Haran has worked with academics across the sciences, theology and modern languages in bringing their subjects to a wider audience.

Very wide, in the case of the Periodic Table of Videos (PTOV) — a website which hosts a video for each element of the periodic table. Participating academics from the School of Chemistry have had their videos viewed more than 9.25 million times via the project’s YouTube channel.

Instead of showcasing research and giving the videos a corporate, promotional feel, the PTOV team have concentrated on the basics of chemistry, how elements are constructed and how they react, and illustrated this in a visually engaging way — which usually involves blowing things up.

The strategy worked. The channel has thousands of fans, ranging from Nobel Prize winners to American schoolchildren.

The Election 2010 blog, a collaboration between the School of Politics and the Communications office, found its audience in those seeking wider academic comment around May’s General Election.

Journalists were a significant group in the blog’s audience, with activity around the project leading to 466 articles in the local, national and international media.

It also found favour with other bloggers and the general public, clocking up more than 90,000 views over the election period.

At the other end of the scale, Twitter can prove an excellent way of getting your news and views out to the wider audience. The 140-character limit on messages can be liberating rather than constricting. Academics @profbriancox (University of Manchester, Physics, @drpetra (lecturer in international health services and agony aunt) and @carriejenkins (University of Nottingham, philosophy) are all worth a follow. The most interesting (and most popular) academics concentrate less on blowing their own trumpet and more on sharing information that might be of interest to people like them.

For more information on how you could use social media productively, contact tara.decozar@nottingham.ac.uk