A few months ago, I wrote about why you—yes, you!—should build a website. Today, I’d like to bolster my case with some help from one of the best science communicators out there today, Emily Lakdawalla.
Emily Lakdawalla is Senior Editor at the Planetary Society. I suspect many of our faculty and grad students already follow her on Twitter, but if you don’t, you should. If nothing else, follow her for the incredible photos.
Earlier this month, she tweeted this:
And she’s right! There’s a lot of amazing research that happens at NC State, and the University Communications team does a great job of promoting it. But it’s the researchers themselves who know their work best. Maintaining your own website, highlighting your interests and accomplishments, and providing an easy way for people like Emily Lakdawalla to contact you goes a long way toward promoting yourself to the broader world.
So when I saw that tweet (don’t tell Jen I was on Twitter during the work day…), I helpfully replied:
As long-time readers might be able to guess, I was thinking of our very own WordPress Blogs service at WordPress.ncsu.edu. Similar services are available at institutions across the country, including our friends in Chapel Hill.
If you’re one of those young scientists Emily was referring to, you may be thinking something like this:
“I’m a post-doc! I love NC State and the phenomenal service offered by OIT, but I’m going to be heading to another job next year. Why put in the effort to build a website at NC State when I’ll have to do it all over again at my next institution?”
Anticipating your concern, I also tweeted:
This is one of the great things about WordPress, and why it’s the CMS of choice for OIT Design. It’s incredibly easy to transfer the content from one site to another. (If you’re having trouble or you need some pointers, that’s something we’ll gladly help with.)
And even if your next institution doesn’t offer a WordPress service, you can build a free WordPress.com site or purchase a unique domain name and import your NC State site’s content just as easily.
So it’s not just us that think this is important. Listen to Emily and go to WordPress.ncsu.edu to build your site today!