Developments to enhance your staff profile

Showcase your expertise

A strong staff profile helps visitors associate a name with a face (and a title) and will increase engagement in your area of expertise by allowing the personality behind your teaching or research to shine through.

A well put-together staff page, with a variety of resources included, is a great way to develop an emotional connection with visitors, while still keeping the design professional and consistent. 

Rather than simply functioning as a contact page, a staff profile should be seen as an engaging landing page to showcase your expertise. This is important because your profile will likely be the first page a visitor lands on after performing a Google search for your name. First impressions count.

Easy to edit and add content

We have made it easier for you to edit your staff page through the same CMS used for editing other webpages. Our developments have combined data from three separate sources – HR's record system, publications pulled from Elements and user-generated CMS content – into a simple to use back end.

You can update your profile by going to www.plymouth.ac.uk/admin and ensuring your content is as engaging as it can be for your key target audiences.

These tools are designed to be more accessible than previous systems and allow you to personalise your profile to a greater degree – from adding publications lists, research group membership and links to articles, to integrating social media and multimedia content such as videos.

Keeping your content up to date is critical, so we've built a new notification system to remind you when it's time to check your profile again.

Assigning delegate access to edit your staff profile

It is now possible to choose up to three members of staff to have delegate access to edit your profile. This is particularly useful if you would like help with uploading images and creating and publishing galleries.

• To set this up, go to your staff profile in the CMS and select up to three names in the 'Shared With' tab. (1)
• On re-publishing your staff page, those chosen staff members will have access to your profile and will be able to make changes on your behalf.
• Delegated staff members will have the ability to create galleries, including uploading images, as well as being able to save and publish.
• You can view which profiles you can edit by visiting the Staff Profiles section in the CMS. (2)

Feature your work in galleries

Highlight your publications

We have created a new publication feature that can be shown within your staff profile, which uses up to six highlights from your publications in Elements.

This will help your audience see a series of your publications really quickly, without them having to scan through a big list of publications. 

If you choose to highlight your publications, they will appear at the bottom of your staff profile biography page, and also at the top of the 'publications' tab of your profile. If no publications are featured, then the highlights section on a staff profile will not show.

Feature your latest work or collect a series of publications which work well together to showcase your interests and research-rich expertise.

In sync with the expert directory

We have made it easier to highlight your teaching and research areas of expertise by connecting staff profiles with our expert directory for the media.

Profiles can show up to eight areas of expertise a member of staff can be contacted about, surfacing the content from the single source of the directory. 

These relevant areas of expertise (e.g. marine pollution, robotics) will show on your profile beneath your photo. 

This greater transparency will help a member of the media know how to contact you about your expertise so that they can request an interview.

Display research group membership

You can now choose to display any research group memberships you may have on your staff profile. 

In the CMS edit view of your profile there is now a checkbox to confirm if you would like research groups to show. Search from the list and choose all relevant ones.

Any groups you do add will then show in alphabetical order under the Research tab of your live profile, in a new section called 'Research groups'.

This is another simple and useful way to showcase your research expertise.

Greater connections

As well as it being easier to update your biography, teaching and research interests and publications, social media fields have been added to your profile, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Orcid.

Considering how professionals use social media accounts to communicate news and share knowledge, linking to your accounts is a fantastic way to let visitors easily connect with you and explore your full range of research, news and opportunities for engagement.