Consistency across different ways of communicating, whether online or face to face will help people to understand who you are and where your interests might overlap and helps to build trust. Are you using the same phrases and words in your descriptions of yourself?

Writing for an industry magazine or an article for The Conversation can hugely (and rapidly) widen your audience and potential networks. The joy of this kind of writing is that it is much shorter than an academic article, and doesn’t involve the peer review process, so is much quicker as well.

• It’s the Enterprise team job to develop links between researchers and industry - they may know of funding that will enable this or may have contacts to introduce to if you have a compelling offer or request.

• Make sure your profile is up to date and ask someone else to review it and give you feedback. It’s the first place someone will look to learn about you – make sure it reflects you and where you are going.  Engage in the activity below to review your online presence.

If you were searching for a journal article, it’s likely you’d use keywords. What keywords or phrases would represent you as a researcher? Research themes? Challenges? Techniques or soft skills? Sectors? Make sure these keywords are used consistently whenever you communicate about yourself.

Look back at the ‘mapping your network section’ and find a gap which you wanted to address. Is there a particular type of event, training course, workshop, consultation, or conference, which you could participate in, which might allow you to become more visible and develop more connections (or deepen existing ones) in this area? Look for groups or events on LinkedIn or Eventbrite using keyword searches.

• If there isn’t an event or a network in your area- why not organise one? Contributing to conference organisation is a great way to make sure that everyone attending knows your name, as well as being a potentially really rewarding way of contributing to the direction of your discipline. This links back to the idea that many networking activities are actually about investing in a community. So, if you don’t want to organise a conference, maybe it’s something smaller like a journal club, seminar series, podcast or twitter conversation.
• Invite a small number of industry contacts to a short workshop (online or face to face) where you can each share current interests and expertise and future plans and challenges – time spent just listening to each other’s perspectives can help to quickly build trust and rapport and find ways that you could start working together. You may even be able to get funding to have sessions like this professionally facilitated. 

How do you describe your work when you meet people? Can you write down three or four different levels of description, depending on someone’s own area of expertise or interest? Starting with a simple non-technical explanation, becoming more detailed. 

Practice them and have them ready to use when you are ‘on the spot’ meeting someone for the first time.  In the links section for this resource, you will see a useful structure for drafting and practicing a short ‘elevator pitch’ about your research.

Your email signature is also a place to indicate what you’re interested in. “I’m interested in talking about xxxx”, “Contact me if you want to know more about xxxx”. “Here’s my latest article:”

Think about all the ways you can boost the readership and impact of your articles so that more people get to see what you are doing. There are some great suggestions in the University of Edinburgh’s guide to boosting the impact of publication

• ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher. Make use of tools like preprints, figshare and institutional repositories to share your work and engage with a wider audience. Use hashtags and share posters or a summary of your publications on twitter.

• The new people you meet are interested in ‘future you’ – how they might engage with things you will work on next – be sure to talk about these in presentations and in your online profile. “I’m interested in working on XXX next – please get in touch if you’re interested in discussing or working with me on this” or “I hope to start working in the following places/ with the following people in future, let me know if you have experience or contacts I could use” or “I’d like to set up a special interest group on XXX …contact me if you would like to join”.