By Heather Buschman
At my research institution’s annual symposium last year, I spent all day tweeting updates on the speakers and links to more information on topic areas. I ended each tweet with the hashtag #SBsymposium that I encouraged others to use in order to collect all related tweets into one news feed. An editor with Nature Publishing Group (NPG) noticed my tweets and sent me a Twitter message asking if I’d like to write about the symposium for NPG’s conference blog. I would be writing about it for my institution’s blog anyway, and here was an opportunity to reach an even broader audience. An opportunity made possible by Twitter.
About a year and a half ago I had an eureka moment in which I realized how I could make more effective use of my institution’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. It just made sense that social media could help connect with all the audiences we want to reach and drive more traffic to the Sanford-Burnham Institute website and blog — if we do it right.
Social media takes many forms with Facebook and Twitter being the eight-hundred-pound gorillas in the room. But there’s also LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Crowdrise, Quora, Pinterest, and many others. It’s worth exploring a few to see which are the best ways to reach your particular audience. For a not-for-profit medical research institute, potential donors and employees are more likely to be on Facebook, while journalists and funding agencies are easier to follow on Twitter. Blogs are also an important part of the science PIO’s social media toolbox, but that deserves its own separate discussion.
For the sake of simplicity, this article will focus on Twitter, but most concepts apply to other social media channels.
How to find the time
As a PIO trying to do more with less, your plate is already full. If you’re like me, you’re already working on at least three different press releases, launching a new website, getting the latest donor newsletter out the door, and planning an event. Not to mention press calls to answer, pitches to make, a presentation to get started on, staff meetings, and all that other work that keeps you from your actual work.
I’ve heard it said that social media is “free.” Free like a “free puppy.” In other words, there’s no upfront financial cost, but it can cost you significant time and energy caring for it. Initially, I spent a lot of time with social media (probably too much time). It’s natural to experience a time-consuming learning curve early on, as you comb the web, looking for groups and people that you should be following and for content that’s appropriate to share with your followers and fans. It can also be addicting, as you see science writers and others you admire start following you and re-tweeting your content.
So, how to do you make time for social media? You have to make it part of your routine. Now, I average just 45 minutes each day on social media. On days when there’s a lot going on in the Twitter-verse, I spend more time. Other days, if I’m too caught up in other activities, I don’t log on at all. But I never want too much time to pass. A social media presence should always be fresh and frequent. A Twitter account that hasn’t seen a new tweet in a month isn’t going to attract too many new followers.
Crafting a social media message has now become a natural extension of what I write. As I’m working on a press release or blog post, I’m already thinking about how to describe it in fewer than 140 characters and who I should mention when I do tweet it out — these can include a collaborating institution, the journal that published the study, the agency that funded it, or a patient advocacy group that I think might be interested. Social media can also be fun, so checking our Facebook page and Twitter feed feeling more like a break than it feels like added work.
What to do with it
Social media is just that — social. It’s about talking, asking questions, sharing content, listening, and looking for opportunities to provide information or join a conversation. It has to be more than just another way to push out press releases. It also means following certain etiquette, such as thanking people who follow, re-tweet, and mention your institution. You should also mention other people or groups involved wherever possible. In turn, they often re-tweet your message or link to their followers. Those followers then share with their followers, and so on. Before you know it, hundreds of people are sharing a link and visiting your site.
Social media can also be used as a tool for traditional media relations. Though some may appreciate it more than others, Twitter allows you to “eavesdrop” on bloggers and journalists. You learn what is of interest to them, what they are writing about, and where and how to direct a pitch. For example, I saw an editor of a trade magazine tweet out an article on brown fat. I tweeted back with a comment and a link to a blog post I’d written on the same topic. The editor thanked me. Another time, a national news reporter/blogger tweeted his amazement at the discovery of taste receptors in the bladder. I responded by sharing a link to one of our stories about research on taste receptors in the gut.
Of course, with the power of social media comes responsibility. You are the voice of your institution. Comment on and share links only to articles that speak to your organization’s area of expertise and core values. Don’t write anything that scientists or others working at your institution might disagree with. In short, avoid controversy. For example, my institution is founded in basic cancer research, so I stick to the science and avoid content involving dubious stem cell treatments, too-good-to-be-true weight-loss therapies, or other modern-day snake-oil pitches.
How to sell it to the boss
It’s rare that an organization’s executive leadership will direct the communications department to get on board with social media. You, as the communications expert, need to take the lead. We started with a short white paper explaining social media and how it could benefit the institute. In retrospect, I wish we’d also set the stage early on with a social media policy for the entire institute, including encouragement and guidelines for employees, laboratories, and other groups to participate. It would have also been helpful to include clear instructions on how faculty members could contribute by providing us with information and photos from conferences, interesting meetings, and other blog- and social media-worthy events.
Nevertheless, the white paper got us started, though I don’t think upper management took much notice until we started demonstrating ROI (return on investment). So how do you demonstrate the return? To help answer that question for our leadership and other stakeholders, our department produces a monthly Online Communications Report that includes qualitative highlights and quantitative statistics for our website, blog, monthly email update, online staff newsletter, two Twitter accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other channel (Foursquare, YouTube, etc.) that saw some action that month.
Graphing a growing number of followers and monthly visits to our blog is satisfying, but who actually engaged with us and what they said is more important. So, the monthly report highlights a few notable new followers — a science writer, a fellow PIO — and interesting comments, re-tweets, mentions, or conversations. We also describe any new approaches we tried (using a poll on Facebook, for example) and whether or not it proved helpful.
What about financial gain? Certainly there are groups trying to convert followers into donors, with varying degrees of success. But don’t count on it, especially right away. In the meantime, there are many other (non-monetary) benefits to social media — increased website traffic and more opportunities for traditional media coverage, for example.
Enjoy being a part of the experiment. I’ll see you out there. (Twitter: @HeatherBuschman or @SanfordBurnham.)
Twitter dos and don’ts
DON’T: Scientists Discover Molecular Switch That Determines How the Pancreas Responds to Dietary Fructose by Releasing Insulin http://bit.ly/xiIc58
DO: Taste receptors in the pancreas?!? Amazing but true .. new @PNASnews study shows they help sense dietary fructose http://bit.ly/xiIc58
DON’T: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute Scientists Study Heart Disease http://bit.ly/A7T8lU
DO: Today is National #WearRedDay! Check out the @NIH_NHLBI flash mob: http://1.usa.gov/wHsA3q [video] #heartmonth
DON’T: San Diego Magazine Names Sanford Consortium #1 “Reason to Love San Diego this Month” http://bit.ly/zSWydJ
DO: What’s @SanDiegoMag’s #1 reason to love San Diego this month? Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine!! http://bit.ly/zSWydJ #stemcells
Places to find fodder for social media
Look beyond your own website; be sure to cite sources.
Blog posts: Your own or someone else’s — even another university or research institution
News articles: Link to any article on a topic relevant to your institution’s science (but avoid controversy)
Events: Twitter is especially useful for events — before, during, and after. Look for hashtags to follow and create your own. Examples: #WorldCancerDay #SciWri12 #SfN12
Questions: Example: “If you were interviewing Francis Collins, what would you ask him?”
Video: Link to YouTube videos
Heather Buschman, Ph.D. is scientific communications manager for the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.
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