Research Branding and Promotion

Brand is a company’s or organizations or person’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Traditionally and in terms of marketing brand is associated with the name making and reputation of an organization. However, today scenario is different. Every person, society or even a social media page is brand. For instance: Amitabh Bachchan is a brand name, because many a times he is known for a movie or product, rather than the movie or product itself. Similarly, we use name of a certain society in the locality we live as landmark, which is brand. Brand in a layman’s term is nothing but identification without an ID Card. You do not need Hon’ble PM Shri Narendra Modi’s ID Card to recognize him, just his name and face is enough. That is Brand.

Now, taking again the aforementioned examples of two dignitaries, let us see how they have created their “BRAND.” There are few simple and key steps; first, they make sure they are active on social media; secondly, they make sure they are involved with the public (current affairs, daily updates); thirdly, they do not forget to acknowledge people who do well or appreciate them; and last but the most important, they do magnificent work in their respective field. Next comes the promotion. “Jo dikhta hai, woh bikta hai” Promotion is what you do create an image, that consequently creates a BRAND. So, promotion leads to brand. However, here I am going to discuss about the promotion techniques and methods for brand evaluation for the people who are in research or academia, i.e., if you are a researcher, scientist, postgraduate, doctoral, or postdoctoral researcher, professor or allied in institutes, and many more. Taking forward I would like to discuss on the question “What is the importance of promoting research?” The answer is it directly affects your professional or research career. Let us say, if you are a famous researcher than, more people will be looking for your work, which means it will increase the visibility of your work (papers, books, patents, etc.). This will increase the citations to work and enhance the impact on the research area. Also, if you are currently doing research in an area and you get stuck at an indispensable problem than you can come across people who can help you and vice-versa. Also, it is limpid, that this promote your research area too; and you will be able to create generations for your work; this consequently will also increase implementation and rationalization of your work; additionally, it will even help you get your multi-disciplinary and more practical for applications.

Moving ahead there are enormous ways in which you can promote your work, you can do this online as well as offline mode (taking both paths is inevitable), and almost all of them are easily available on the internet, to cut short the article and avoid plagiarism, I will just jot the crux of them here. For promoting online, start with putting together the strategy, think about which researchers and audiences will be interested in your research, the disciplines they work in, and where they are available the most; writing summary, drawing graphical abstracts, or posting short videos and reels will give you an extra advantage in gathering audience. You can make use of several tools that come in handy for creating vivid and engaging visual aids. Providing all your data is another way, you can do this by one or more of the following ways: (i) providing all your data in paper; (ii) you can use supplementary data available options while publishing your paper; (iii) you can even use the option of data available from author on request, or (iv) you can just share unpublished data on social media or internet or blogs. Well, it has been over a decade, and most of the publishing house encourages you to share the links of your published work on all available social media platforms. If you have something which is not really intense work for publishing or may get omitted from your actual manuscript, because of lack proper evidence or substance, you can use blogs to communicate the same to the people. Even, as a geek researcher, if you have kept yourself isolated from social media, you must be active on professional and research social media sites. It is always a promising idea, to share the links of your profiles in your mail signatures. Make attempts in creating a non-virtual research office too; this do not mean to set-up infrastructure but having discussions on your thoughts about your work to other people working in same domain is always a solution where everyone benefits. Further, if possible, try to publish as free access, most publishing house permits free access publications now. However, this feature is chargeable and may cost you, but, if your funding agency facilitates, then you must go for free access.

Before closing, a few tips and tricks, and the most basic one is not to be shy, be bold and audacious to discuss about your works and ideas; make sure your work is authentic and ethical, this will give you confidence; use research platforms and always look for Google’s Scholar (a free platform) for your research work visibility; use the classic style of promotions too (like putting stuff on your bulletin boards, newsletters, etc.), get yourself, accustomed with Intellectual Property Rights and get maximum benefit out of it; furthermore, it is always good idea to learn new things about research writing through tutorials. Lastly to conclude, I would just like to say, you can always be creative and think out of the box for promoting your work. Having a sound brainstorming with your seniors, peers and even sub-ordinates is always a go. If you are in academic profession, you can always communicate with your students for getting enlightened about the various tech-enabled platforms and ideas for promoting your work, this will directly help you in pushing your work towards next generation.