Use social media to share your research with impact.
But with so many platforms, algorithms and other content to deal with, how do you use social media e ectively without swallowing up your time?
is guide goes through six key components to successfully adapt your research communications for lay audiences on social media.
Start with why.
Applying this to your research, what big real world problem does your project address and why is it important?
All your messaging on social media must address this, and then explain why this is relevant and important to your target audience too.
Identify your audience.
want to get out of it too - is it to raise awareness, attract more funding, get in the news?!
Answering these questions will help you identify your core audience, decide where to focus your social media (here’s a handy demographic tool from Sprout Social to decide on the best platform), and what messages you need to get across to appeal to them.
Clarify your message.
Social media thrives on our short attention spans, with the average half life of a tweet estimated at 24 minutes, and users stopping for three seconds to read them (Wiselytics, 2016). So your messaging needs to be direct, targeted and engaging.
To distill your research into social media friendly bitesize chunks, the following structure is useful: Start with why: is research into WHAT helps address the wider problem of WHAT, that could help WHO do WHAT, because WHY.
Key findings: List 3 core ndings that address the problem stated and how it could help your audience
Recommendations: List 3 practical applications of your research and how they apply to your audience
Call to action: State in one sentence what you want audiences to do as a result of seeing your post/research
ese chunks are best split up into di erent posts –either as separate posts in the same thread or over the course of a few days, so audiences have time to see it, digest it and engage with it.
Now you know what you are going to say, you need to decide how best to say it.
Using visuals to convey your message is crucial: LinkedIn posts with images have a 98% higher comment rate on average and Tweets that include visual content are three times more likely to get engagement.
Use clear visuals.
These visuals could be:
• a stock photo that represents the written part of the post (try Unsplash for free stock photos)
• a simple infographic to explain a process or theory (try Canva’s free infographic maker)
• a video of you explaining ndings in a short, accessible way (try Loom Video for free screen capture)
• a quick whiteboard animation that takes audiences through your research (try VideoScribe to make your own cheaply and easily)
Whatever visual you decide to use, make sure it is appropriate for your audience, avoids jargon and is easy to understand.
Plan your posts.
All your hard work will be lost if you don’t consider the best time to share your message with your audience. Coinciding with a relevant date (like International Women’s Day for example) or harnessing interest in a recent news story is a good way to increase interest in your posts if you can make your research topic relevant. Also, posting when your target audience is likely to be online and receptive to information will increase engagement – take a look at Hubspot’s 2020 report on social media use for guidance.
To generate engagement you need to be consistent and organised in your posting too. Using an account that has an established following, posts that use appropriate hashtags to drive tra c and content that appears on a regular posting schedule will increase your chances of
If you want to do this yourself, you could use a social media management platform like Hootsuite that will allow you to schedule posts and automatically suggest relevant hashtags and the best time to post. Alternatively, think about involving your faculty’s or central marketing team to help (or at the very least reshare) to improve chances of your posts being seen by your desired audience.
Track your progress.
Finally, you’ll want to know that your e orts have been successful. Decide what engagement measures are meaningful to you: is it retweets and likes, or number of comments and direct follow ups, or post reach (number of people who have seen it)? (You can see more guidance here.)
Most social media platforms have an ‘insights’ page that tracks this information for you – check in with it regularly to see what posts are working and at what time. en do more of what works! Using social media for research isn’t a static process and be prepared for some trial and error.
