20140917 Social media for scientists

Social media for scientists:Boosting your impactJulia VeitchMarketing & Communications, Central Clinical School, Monash University17 September 2014

Central Clinical School

Social media for scientists 217 September 2014

This presentation covers:

• Part 1: Overview of social media – how & why it’s useful

• Part 2: How Central Clinical School is using it

• Part 3: Case study of a publication


Social media for scientists 3

What are the main features of social media?• Social i.e. interactive

• Easy to show & share things with people

• Easy for others to share your news – capacity to amplify

• Individually driven : “Views expressed are my own” – individual profile belongs to the individual, not the org

• Scalability – e.g. a video can be viewed an infinite number of times.

• Following is voluntary – capacity to target and develop highly specialised interest groups & networks.


Part 1: Overview of social media

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Figure 1. Monthly potential audience by communication methodology – capacity to amplify

Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013) An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535

White fill - social media

Grey fill - traditional

Social media for scientists


17 September 2014




http://melissaterras.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/is-blogging-and-tweeting-about-research.html

“Upon blogging and tweeting, within 24 hours, there were on average 70 downloads of my papers.”

Melissa Terras

The papers that were tweeted and blogged had >11x the number of downloads than their sibling paper which was left to its own devices in the institutional repository.


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• http://cameronwebb.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/can-social-media-increase-the-exposure-of-newly-published-research/ (2013)

• http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001535 (2013)

• http://melissaterras.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/is-blogging-and-tweeting-about-research.html (2012)

The metrics, for all the caveats, indicate that

if you tell people about your work, they look at it and are more likely to cite it.


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http://cameronwebb.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/can-social-media-increase-the-exposure-of-newly-published-research/










Part 2: Central Clinical School communications

Traffic out from a communications platform with quality, current content

• Increases traffic in - the more ways, the better

• Increase our connections to relevant networks – capacity to amplify

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Presentation title 8

How does social media help the school?

Specific benefits

• Increases views and downloads of publications & products.

• Increases recruitment to events, varying on the type of event and the target audience.

• Enables widespread, rapid dissemination well beyond the School’s own capacity

• Value for effort is high

• Case study: FODMAP


43%

17%

17%

11%

7%

2013 FODMAP public lecture (N=488 survey respondents)

Website

Social media

Word of mouth

University

SIG

Advertisement or notice

Natalie Nott

Medico referral Dec-1

2

Jan-

13

Feb-1

3

Mar

-13

Apr-1

3

May

-13

Jun-

13

Jul-1

3

Aug-1

3

Sep-1

3

Oct-1

3

Nov-1

3

Dec-1

3

Jan-

140

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

FODMAP app downloads

Apple

Android

Cross-promotionbenefit:

Oct 2013 peakwith FODMAP public lecture promotions

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Platforms used by CCS:


Website: Content Management SystemStable repository of institutional, quality controlled information

Social mediaFlexible, fast, capable of interaction & customising for niche groups.Channels for both broadcasting & dialogue. Output linked back to either web pages or blog entries.

• Blog: Google blogger (similar function to website but news specific & easy to share)

• Short posts: Twitter (owned by FB, needs Hootsuite workaround for feed to G+ page)

• Video: Youtube (owned by Google & direct feeds to G+ page)

• Images: Pinterest (virtual pinboard for photos and videos)

• Google+ page (hub for CCSMonash social media channels)

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http://ccsmonash.blogspot.com.au/



https://twitter.com/CCSMonash

http://www.youtube.com/CCSMonash

http://www.youtube.com/CCSMonash

http://www.pinterest.com/CCSMonash/central-clinical-school-monash-university/

https://plus.google.com/109692628492761985895/posts

Presentation title 1017 September 2014

Notes:

Facebook owns Twitter – therefore no RSS feed of Twitter to Google+ except via Hootsuite. Google owns Blogger, Youtube and Photo galleries

CCS has now set up a dummy FB profile to manage all Dept FB accounts



CCS public website

Web viewing stats –

100 views/week to 30,000 views/weekin 3 years – spikes are media stories

Social media linked - Feed & share widgets used e.g. youtube, twitter.

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CCS blog• Feeds to Google+ page

• Features CCS original news only

• Story links emailed weekly to distribution list (≈800)

• Searchable by search engines

• Linked & categorised

• Stats: 4,800 unique visitors (counted only once) in 12 mths;12,600+ page views

• Spikes of activity on creationof new entries & mailout. Traffic out = Traffic in

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CCS Twitter• Feed from CCS Youtube

channel

• Broadcasts CCS news

• Publications scheduled from Faculty monthly pubs lists

• Searchable within Twitter

• Linked back to informationsources

Statistics

• Launched in May 2013

• 443 followers

• 301 retweets from 1,150 tweets (ratio of 1:4) i.e. going into other channels

• Traffic out keeps on going out

2 RTs of this went to 19,500 people

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MAPrc28%

Admin24%

Immunology17%

Gastro10%

Medicine7%

NTRI3%

Inf. Diseases3%

Baker3%

ACBD3%

CCS followers by Department (N=35)


@CCSMonash followers

Individual44%

Organisations16%

CCS

SIG13%

Monash6%

Media5%

All followers segmented (N=443)

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CCS youtube channel home page

Statistics• 76 video clips

• 28,500+ views (15,000 FODMAP)

• 133 subscribers

• Videos sell themselves – post them and they havea life of their own

Content:• HODs

• Research

• 3MT

• Student profiles

• Events

Deployed:• Web pages

• Blog

• Pinterest

• Google+

• Events

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Dec 2013 FODMAP lecture upload

Aug 2014 recipe upload for Catalyst broadcast

16


CCS Google+ social media hub pageContent:

• Feed driven:

• Videos

• Blog

• Twitter via Hootsuite

• Photos (75% of all views)

• Events

• Ad hoc posts

Connections:

• ‘Circles’

• SIGs, Alumni, Professional

Statistics

• 175,000+ views in 8 mths

• 90 followers

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Part 3: Case study – Professor T.R. Vidyasagar

TwitterIf you start leading, people will start following.

YoutubeA visual blog, with a much longer life thana tweet

What Sagar has done• Created Twitter & Youtube accounts

• Timed Twitter & Youtube output to amplify effect i.e. increase views of his paper

• Linked back to source material

• Added a Twitter feed window on his web page


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18Social media for scientists

Tweet build & impactLink to Sagar’s youtube video, in which he gives an extempore, short account of content of a recent paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience which is open access. This tweet has been retweeted (RT) 9x, to 6400 people.

Having a good follower base:

Sagar has a ‘fan’ – a fellow scientist with 881 followers on Twitter. She ‘powers up’ his tweets by RTing. Her followers then RT further. He RTs her tweets, to show goodwill since he has only 24 followers at this point. Lacking a Silvia, use your institution’s Twitter feed.

Ow.ly – shortens the link since a tweet is only 140 characters long. Link goes directly to the Frontiers paper

# Hashtag – indexes the item so it’s easierto find

Twitter ‘handle’ or name – make it obvious


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Embedded Twitter feed

• Stable anchor point of host web page in organisational context

• Dynamic feed through widget window - host web page does not require updating

• Options for viewers

• following or browsing

• Communicating via the medium

• Sharing the item


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Youtube

Setting up the channel & entry – links, links, links


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ResultsViews of the paper

No. of views of the Frontiers paper before (72 views in 20 days) and after the tweet went out (a further 130 in 5 days) i.e. 10x more/day. It is a spike & dwindles quickly. A further tweet of the youtube link explaining the research created further views. Total to date is 640. 9 retweets (RT) resulted in a total Twitter audience of 6,438.

Youtube will have a longer term effect than a tweet to create views and downloads of the paper, as youtube is searchable from any internet search engine. 218 views to date on the video.

Sagar’s warning: Beware the ‘Digital Drain’ – be very targeted. Get your Comms officer to help you.

30/11/13 Sagar’s tweet of

his video

1/12/13 Silvia’s RT of Sagar’s video

5 day blocks1 2 3 4 5

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140DownloadsViews

Downloads (DL) of full paper

• 142 DLs in 3 months. (Nov 8 - Feb 11), 25 in 5 days following tweets. Average DLs approx 50/mth. Compare with:

• 286 DLs in 27 months. (2011 Frontiers paper) Average DLs 11/mth.

Paper viewsYoutube views


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Summary


• What drives web & social media traffic? Traffic out Traffic in; Capacity to share

• What is good for the visitor? They find what they want & need i.e. accurate, linked, current, regularly updated, accessible (indexed & clearly written) information attractively presented in a variety of suitable formats (calendars, text, pictures, video) which is easy to share e.g. retweet for Twitter.

• What is good for authors? The platform is easy to use, & content is easy to share including dynamic, automated feeds to pages and channels; resulting in increased dissemination & citations of content. Central support is available from Monash; but social media done by in particular by individuals to peers can substantially boost the impact, especially since there is a relative window of opportunity while the market is still not saturated.

• What enables it? In real estate, the mantra is ‘Location, location, location’. In the digital world, it’s ‘Links, Links, Links’

• What is bad for authors? Time consuming, potential to be ‘trolled’. See appendices for lists of pros and cons.

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Julia Veitch [email protected] x30026

• Fulltime

• Developing & managing all aspects of CCS comms

Vithya Premkumar [email protected] x30368

• 12 hrs/week

• Systems set up, support, cms, enews, intranet, calendars etc

Dussy Kuttner [email protected]

• 12 hrs/fortnight

• Journalism, social media

The CCS comms team & what we do

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mailto:[email protected]



Appendix: Table 1. Comparison of Online Tools



Platform Pros Cons

Blogs Longevity; posts are accessible via search engines

Robust platform for building an online reputation

Time investment for preparing thoughtful posts Posts should be disseminated and advertised via

other platforms

Twitter Low time investment, short posts Ability to rapidly join online conversations The most current source for breaking news

and topical conversation

Posts are quickly buried under new content Twitter does not make its archive database

accessible to search Gaining followers can be a slow & difficult process

Facebook Established juggernaut in the social media world

Ability to create ‘groups’ and ‘pages’ for a person or cause

Privacy concerns Frequent changes to layout, features and settings

Google+ Integration with Google tools Easily manage privacy/visibility by grouping

contacts into ‘circles’

User base not unique compared to other sites Users still unsure how to use it



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Appendix Figure 2. Flowchart showing a decision tree for scientists who are interested in communicating online

Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013) An Introduction to Social Media for

Scientists. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535.

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535



• Who

• Why

• How

• Time


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Appendix Figure 3. Common online communication fears and suggested solutions



Wasting time [JV add]


Work with your Communications officer to save time and to link into other bigger networks

