Grow Your Social Media Platform in 2025

Social media always seemed silly and dangerous to me. Why waste time posting, especially since posting could get me fired. But I felt lost during COVID. It was hard to connect and hard to share ideas. So I tested out Academic Twitter (i.e., the platform now called X).

And I was blown away. Networking online helped me: learn new skills (e.g., how to make email manageable), get new opportunities (e.g., an invitation to speak at the Toronto International Festival of Authors), and connect with potential readers (as imperfect evidence: The Grant Writing Guide has sold thousands of copies).

I want you to experience these benefits - and more. Having a larger network helps you: find jobs, recruit, get support, and be part of a bigger community.

Join me in January 2025 for a bootcamp on growing your social media platform. It’s free! The bootcamp will focus on growing on Bluesky. You’ll get four emails from January 6 - 9 (i.e., one email per day). Each email will have:

• A short lesson.
• An exercise to help you grow.

Register here.

Why Bluesky? The platform is growing rapidly and many scholars use it. I prefer the functions of Bluesky over Mastodon and Threads.

Why take a bootcamp with me? I have experience growing on social media. I have over 20,000 followers on Academic Twitter. I no longer want to support the platform, so I’m switching to Bluesky. I’ll be growing alongside you. I see this as a plus, as I’m learning what it means to grow in this space. And, this bootcamp is informed by insights I’ve gained interviewing over 60 public scholars for my new book, The Public Scholar.

Do you need a Bluesky account? Yes. But you can sign up now. I have a few invitation codes if you need one. Just reply to this email to ask.

What if you want to grow on another social media platform? That's great - invest your energy in places you care about. You could sign up for this bootcamp to see if the strategies apply to your preferred platform. Or send me an email to let me know which platforms you'd like to learn about in the future.

If you know anyone who’d like to grow on Bluesky, could you forward this newsletter to them so they can register for the bootcamp? Thanks for reading and believing that scholars deserve support for incredible ideas.

Betty

Stay in touch: The Newsletter, Bluesky, TikTok, and The Grant Writing Guide book.

P.S. Wishing you all a happy holiday season! Here’s my favorite gift from last year. It’s a map of the Boston T trains. It updates live, and it’s so pretty at night. My kids like to guess which dot is dad’s train.