Fast Track Impact

This week, Mark explores the factors that increase motivation so you can become more productive in your work and find time and energy to generate more impact. This is based on an excerpt from his forthcoming book, The Productive Researcher. In the research tip this week, Mark shares some of his favorite​ tools from QMUL's forthcoming Public Engagement Evaluation Toolkit.

This week Mark looks at a variety of ways you can collect evidence to demonstrate whether or not your research has had (or is having) impact. This is important to help correct our course, so we know when things aren't going according to plan, and to provide information to funders and other stakeholders who want to know that you made a difference. He focuses on methods that can be used by any researcher, including a number of creative techniques that take the pain out of evidencing impact.In this week's tip, as a researcher who has been cited >10,000 times, Mark tells you the secrets of writing a highly cited paper or book.Find out more about the Fast Track Impact Evernote impact tracking system.

In this week's episode, Mark discusses four questions that can help you develop a social media strategy that can efficiently drive impact from your research. You don't have to write anything down - if you can answer these four questions in your head, you've got yourself a social media strategy. Mark provides a worked example of answers to the four questions, and shows how he used them to develop a LinkedIn strategy for a research impact that drove real-world​ impacts.

In this episode, Mark discusses how researchers can get more out of their digital footprint, enhancing both their research and impact, without spending too much time or risking their reputation. In this episode, he steers clear of social media, looking at what you can do to manage a sprawling or fractured digital footprint, and make sure you don't waste time updating multiple sites that rapidly become out of date. It is about getting more out of your time online, so you use your time more efficiently.

In this first episode of the second series,​ Prof Mark Reed discusses how to do public engagement or impact, not just for the hell of it. A lot of public engagement is done because it is a good thing to do full stop, which is fine. But how do you know you are actually making a difference, and how can you ensure that all the work you put in really does have a beneficial impact on people?

In this episode, Mark is at the ARMA 2016 conference (Association of Research Managers and Administrators) to hear what leading thinkers think about the future of research impact. He interviews Phillip Ward from the University of Kent who won an ARMA award for his blog, Fundermentals, James Wilson, Professor of Research Policy from the ​University of Sheffield, and Fiona Collegian, the founder of Piirus, with her colleague Jenny Delasalle, freelance copywriter and librarian, and editor of the Piirus Blog.Read the Fundermentals blog or follow Phil on Twitter.

In this episode, Mark explains the three most common motives for researchers to engage with the impact agenda. He then provides tips on how to translate these motives into priorities that can drive action.

In this episode, Mark walks you through seven questions that will give you a social media strategy to power your research to impact:What do you want to achieve through social media?Who are you trying to reach through social media and what are they interested in?How can you move from a “lurker” to a content maker?Who can you work with to make your use of social media more efficient and effective?How can you make your content actionable, shareable and rewarding for those who interact with you?How can you monitor and evaluate your social media plan?How does your social media strategy contribute towards your wider impact strategy?Download your own social media impact template at. www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources

In this episode, Mark interviews the brains behind @CECHR_OuD to reveal how she reached 87,000 followers in four years, currently growing at 150 followers per day, to become one of the most influential research institutional Twitter accounts in the world.Mark also describes six things you can do to grow your influence on social media:Have a social media strategy: know your audience, add value to them and actively promote your researchFocus on Twitter (and LinkedIn if you’ve got time)Be credible: be professional and link to content​Be visual: stand out from the crowdTweet at the right time: audience time zone and engagement peak timesCurate your top 3 tweets and have a follow/unfollow strategyThe Centre of Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR) is a partnership between the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute. Find out more about their work.

In this episode,​ Mark discusses how you can build a network of people who can empower you to have the impacts you want.