Working collaboratively to promote research Joe Paxton Media Relations Officer, Humanities

Media Relations and Social Media - Each Faculty has a dedicated Media Relations Officer, who sits in the central Communications & Marketing Team – I am yours! - Social Media Officer Patrick Crich is also part of our team - We work together with colleagues across the Faculty and its divisions to promote your research to journalists and the public

The media - Traditional media – print and broadcast - Online media – eg The Conversation (more on that later) - Social media - Blogs Engaging with them is good for: - Impact - get your work noticed & improve Altmetric scores - Funding - funding bodies like publicity - Collaboration - fellow academics follow the media - Reputation - builds the University brand

What makes a good story? To grab the attention of journalists, news stories need to stand out - - Groundbreaking/new research - Research which will have a real impact on people - Quirky subject matter - Presented in a clear/standout way, for example through usage of graphics

Life on the line This story about life expectancy levels in Manchester became one of our top stories of last year, thanks to Kingsley Purdam’s use of the Metrolink graphic to plot the data. This is a great example of a researcher thinking beyond the press release to present their findings.

I have a good story – what should I do? Contact Media Relations, Lynda McIntosh or your Institute manager (do this as early as possible so activities can be planned in advance) Bear in mind that it is difficult to write a story from a research paper alone, so please provide the following: - A simple layman's terms outline of your research - Why you have undertaken it - What impact it could have on your area of research or wider society - A two or three-line quote

Join The Conversation The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced directly from the academic and research community. Their articles are republished by the mainstream press, and can lead to much higher levels of visibility for research. We have recently become a full paying member, giving us access to daily expert requests and various editors who are looking for academics to comment on newsworthy stories.

A recent example: This article was written by Psychologist Cary Cooper. The Conversation published it…

…and it was then picked up by 9 other websites including The Independent, World Economic Forum and Business Insider UK.

It ended up getting a total of 19,347 reads from countries across the world – the top ten are pictured here.

Writing for The Conversation It’s extremely easy to register – just a quick online form and you’re ready to go. The Conversation are happy to offer training on how to write for them – they can do this either remotely or in one-to-one sessions. Just speak to me if you’d like to know more.

Contact me - joe.paxton@manchester.ac.uk - x58155 - LG020, John Owens Building