On October 19th, Nicky Agate, managing editor of the MLA Commons shared advice for graduate students who want to improve their online presence. She focused on several resources for grad students:

1. MLA Commons: As part of MLA membership, the MLA Commons site allows students and professors to host professional websites that can link to their new or existing WordPress blogs. Since these sites are associated with the MLA, they rate highly in search engine rankings, which makes them easier to access.
2.  CORE: MLA Commons’ new open access repository, CORE, is currently in Beta mode. Posting work on CORE allows students to increase the visibility of their scholarly work. When researchers upload papers to CORE, they can associate their work with forums that will immediately connect them to potential readers in their field of specializations.
3. ORCID: This site helps researchers establish a digital identity that links all of their publications, grant applications, and other work. ORCID is particularly helpful for researchers with common names who want to distinguish their work from that of others.
4. Twitter: Nicky Agate discussed different strategies for using Twitter as a professional tool including retweeting articles of interest to your scholarly community, networking at conferences, and participating in larger academic conversations around hashtags like #PhDchat, #AcWri, and #AltAc.