How to connect your work to its target audience — without feeling ‘shameless’

Plus information about my newest book, which is being released this week. Role modeling!

Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here.  

Back when Twitter was Twitter and #AcademicTwitter was a useful part of my day, I would regularly see academics post their work with a strong sense of embarrassment. “Shameless self-promotion” such tweets often began, and the tweeter would then apologetically share a tiny amount of information about their hard-completed work, as if its very mention in the collective Twitter timelines was a burden imposed on the world. 

My current Twitter X timeline includes rants about the carbon tax, Wordle updates, and more ads than actual posts. Posts of new academic research would be more than welcome.

Many of us in academia (read: women, minority scholars, anyone socialized to feel like we shouldn’t take up too much space, make too much noise or expect too much attention) feel reluctant to raise awareness of our work. Sure, this work represents months or years of effort, and sure, this work is part of a larger scholarly conversation that would benefit from its insights and perspective, but it just feels unseemly to, well, talk about it. We worry it might appear to others like we are bragging or have an overly inflated view of our contribution. And if the work really is good enough, we tell ourselves, then surely its audience will find it organically — perhaps through the help of a (small, non-intrusive, apologetic, shame-filled, ineffective) social media post that we spent over an hour crafting. 

To all of this, I have exactly two words: Fuck that.

You completed your work for a reason. Ideally, you were seeking to have an impact of some sort. You wanted to inform a scholarly conversation, share insights that will be helpful to practitioners, or shine a light on things that need change. Ideally, something mattered to you enough to motivate you to start the work, push through the drudgery- and doubt-filled middle, and get it to the finish line.

And now that the work is completed (congratulations!!!), your final task is to connect it with the right audience and allow it to achieve the impact that mattered to you in the first place. My position is that you should do so without apology, shame, or any other “oh, I don’t mean to be a bother and take up space” energy.

And that’s what today’s small thing to try immediately is about.

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Connect your work to its target audience

As I am writing this, it is mere days before the release of my new book, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities. My coauthors Jonathan Malloy, Lisa Young, and I started this book pre-Covid and now 53 months later it is about to become part of the world. Fifty-three months is a fair bit of time to work on something, as the deep-sea octopus with the longest recorded gestational period in the animal kingdom (also 53 months!) can attest. Are we going to be quiet about this near-half-decade of work and hope its audience finds it organically? Um, not so much. Nor should you do so for your work. Instead, I encourage you to take steps to connect your work with its target audience. Here is how. 

1. Remember why you completed the work in the first place. You completed your work for a reason. In our case, we wrote our book with a clear purpose: to launch important discussions about social science and humanities graduate education in Canada. We care deeply and feel strongly about the topic. We believe it matters. And you believe your topic matters as well. The challenge is that by the time your work is released, you may have lost touch with whatever motivated you to start in the first place. So before you do anything else, take five minutes to write down your answer to this question: What is the purpose of this work? 

Knowing the purpose of your work is critical for the next step, which is to….

2. Identify your target audience. Your work must be connected with a target audience of specific individuals and/or organizations if it is going to achieve its purpose. For example:

• If the purpose is to inform a scholarly conversation, the target audience is individual researchers currently engaged in this conversation. 

• If the purpose is to share insights that will be helpful to practitioners, the target audience is individual practitioners and the associations supporting them.

• If the purpose is to promote change, the target audience is individuals with the power to make the needed changes and groups positioned to influence these individuals.

The target audience of For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities is individuals positioned to advance change in social science and humanities graduate education in Canada. These include Canadian social science and humanities deans, department chairs, graduate chairs, faculty members, and disciplinary associations. What is the target audience for your work? Take another five minutes and write down your answer to this question: Which individuals and what organizations need to be connected with your work for your work’s purpose to be achieved?

Knowing the target audience of your work is critical for the next step, which is to….

3. Help connect your target audience with your work by directly communicating with them. Direct communication?!? This is the stage where you are likely to get uncomfortable. So I ask that you adopt two core beliefs to move forward: 

1. Your target audience will benefit from your work; and

2. Your target audience exists in our current culture of burnout and overwork and has neither the time nor energy to search for your work.

Help your target audience out! Get your work in front of them! Here are some ideas to start your thinking:

• Create a database of the individuals and organizations in your target audience and send them a short email announcement about your work.

• Contact strategic individuals within your target audience and ask to meet with them to discuss your work.

• Reach out to organizations within your target audience and request the opportunity to present to their membership or write a synopsis for their newsletter.

• Hold a launch event for your work and invite members of your target audience to attend.

For our book, we have done or are planning to do all of the above – including the launch event (so excited!). What are your options to connect with your target audience? Take a final five minutes and write down your answer to this question: What steps will I take to help my target audience connect with my work?

OPTIONAL: After you have connected with your target audience, you may wish to cast the net wider and…

4. Engage beyond your target audience. In addition to the direct communication with your target audience – and here I will stress in addition to – you have the option of connecting your work to broader audiences. Some ideas to spark your thinking:

• Write a general audience article about your work for The Conversation.

• Ask your university’s communications office to share your work with relevant media.

• Add information about your work to your email signature, your university webpage/bio, your LinkedIn (ugh) bio, and any other bios.

To sum up: your work matters. Your work deserves to have the impact it can have. This means connecting it with its target audience – with celebration and without shame or apology.

Oh, and by the way, I have a new book being released this week….

Until next time…

What do you find effective in connecting your work with its target audience? I would love to hear about strategies you have used – both what has worked and what has been less effective — so please let me know in the comments below. And, as always, thank you for reading Academia Made Easier. It is a privilege to be part of your inbox.

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. In my last newsletter, I forgot to mention that I appeared again on the Better Me podcast. If you enjoy podcasts, please check it out. Thank you again, Heather Ross, for the opportunity to appear on your show. Always a pleasure!

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As mentioned earlier (extensively), my new book, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, will be released this week. If you are involved with social science or humanities graduate education in Canada in any way (supervisor, administrator, staff, student, etc.), please preorder now and plan to attend our Career Corner workshop at Congress. Further, my coauthors and I welcome the opportunity to speak at your university! Please reply to this email or send me a direct message on the Substack app and I will get back to you. 😊

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