{"id":15,"date":"2015-05-14T13:30:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T13:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/?p=15"},"modified":"2015-05-14T13:30:16","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T13:30:16","slug":"social-media-for-impact-and-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/2015\/05\/14\/social-media-for-impact-and-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media for impact and innovation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9733284483_e147eda73b_z\"<\/a>It is easy to discard social media as another gimmick for big international companies to collect information about us or as a platform to promote insignificant exchange of information about our daily lives. \u00a0\u00a0The point has been made before, social media is a vast network and, yes, it promotes the dissemination of futile information, but it has something traditional media do not always offer: it is democratic \u2013 if you have access to the internet – and it is free.\u00a0 The question is: can we use it to increase academic research impact and accelerate innovation.<\/p>\n

I am not an expert in social media.\u00a0 Indeed, a few months ago, like many academics I have met, I was the biggest sceptic.\u00a0 Like many academics I meet, Catherine Manthorpe<\/a> had similar concerns about social media.\u00a0 Indeed I thought that social medial as a waste of time, a waste of my time.\u00a0 I had no intention to tell the world what I do with my private life, and I still don\u2019t.\u00a0 At the same time, I could see that, ignoring the largest platform of networking in the world would mean, for my team, missing the boat\u2026 and it would be a long swim to catch up.<\/p>\n

How to begin?<\/h1>\n

So I took the plunge, literally.\u00a0 I gathered information – I am still gathering information; enrolled in a workshop given by Victoria Tomlinson from Northern Light PR<\/a> and I created a social media strategy for my team.\u00a0 It is a slow process, mostly because I am careful, but also because I want to do it right.<\/p>\n

You can ask: why bother with the efforts it takes to use social media when most of us have websites?\u00a0 Surely that web presence is more than enough to leave our mark on the virtual society.\u00a0 Websites are great portals to our world but are they sufficient?\u00a0 Let\u2019s be honest, most websites are not that brilliant at reaching target audiences and at giving \u2018informative\u2019 and succinct information.\u00a0 Furthermore, people have to find it when they search the web.<\/p>\n

Fair enough, rich content will get your website at the top of the Google search, but if you end up on the second page, most of the time, you have missed your chance.\u00a0 I do look at the first couple of pages, but not everyone will do.\u00a0 In other words, you need to take a good look at your website and place yourself in the mind of your target audience, make it attractive to them, not to you.\u00a0 As a end user, I like to find the information quickly; I don\u2019t like reading lots of detailed information \u2013 best to link to another page for more details; and I certainly don\u2019t have time to search through a website forever.\u00a0 If you want to attract your target audience, that\u2019s where social media can be useful.<\/p>\n

Where to go?<\/h1>\n

So let\u2019s suppose I follow you on twitter.\u00a0 You let me know about your discovery in 140 characters; that has to be catching and informative enough to attract me to the right page on your website with a link.\u00a0\u00a0 If you doubt it would work, I have a very good example: I follow @MIT: they posted their discoveries and you can find out about them before they get picked up by the BBC.<\/p>\n

There are dozens of social networks and I see little point in signing up to all of them.\u00a0 Firstly, it takes time to create effective profiles and develop networks.\u00a0 Then those networks have to be nurtured.\u00a0 Belonging to a network is not enough.\u00a0 Like any other relation, collaboration, partnership or business, you have to work at it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying you have to spend all your time talking; a lot of it is listening and approving (or not) what you read.\u00a0 Hence the like\/dislike and follow buttons are useful tools to nurture your relations.<\/p>\n

The essentials: objective and contingency<\/h1>\n

There are 2 aspects to your social media strategy.\u00a0 Firstly, what is your objective \u2013 i.e. what do you want to get out of it and what is your target audience? \u00a0Define your target audience: find out what they want, what they need. Don\u2019t sell yourself -which seems to be contrary to logic – but be there to help, let them know what you are doing, what you are organising \u2013 ok that\u2019s a bit of selling- and, most importantly, what\u2019s in it for them\u2026 then you tell them what it was like (those who were there are more likely to remember you next time you organise an event!) Pictures are worth a thousand words and, let\u2019s face it; twitter only gives you 140 characters to send your message.\u00a0 So, think about a great punch line, maybe add a picture and definitely a link to your website.<\/p>\n

Secondly is your contingency plan. Social media gets people talking about you and it has a vast reach for good and bad things.\u00a0 Of course, we all want good publicity but not all kind of publicity is good.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be the scaremonger but there is one thing we tend to forget about the internet: when you click sent, even on private settings or even if you remove it right away, the information is out there forever.\u00a0 So use social media wisely and include a section in your strategy about dealing with negative outcomes.\u00a0 Forgetting it or burying it is not the best option.\u00a0 The internet has such a wide reach, things can turn out to have worst outcome that you envisaged and it can happen very fast.\u00a0 I cannot give you a contingency strategy, it has to be aligned with your own organisation, but do remember to prepare one, or, at least, to think about it.<\/p>\n

Academic Research Impact<\/h1>\n

That brings me to one last issue I would like to raise: does vast reach means great impact?\u00a0 From an academic point of view, it would be great if the number of followers and \u2018likes\u2019 would be proportionate to the impact a research project has had on society, but is it a true indicator of success?\u00a0 Personally, I don\u2019t think it is always the case.<\/p>\n

Fair enough the quantity is important but, paraphrasing the answer Victoria Tomlinson<\/strong><\/a> gave to a similar question after her talk at the Health and Pharma UIST conference 2014, the true metrics of research impact is not on the thousands who know about it, but on the few people on which the research has had a direct and significant effect.\u00a0 In a way, the more people read about the scientific discovery, the more likely it will reach the person for which it will have a true impact.<\/p>\n

I work for Research and Innovation Services<\/strong><\/a> at the University of Southampton<\/strong><\/a>, and, although I wish it was different, I know a large proportion of the academic impact will not bring direct financial gain.\u00a0 However, letting people know what you have done can allow you and your expertise to be identified by industry and, who knows where it could lead\u2026 I\u2019m here to help and keep the virtual dialogue going!<\/p>\n

Dr Brigitte A. Lavoie, Collaboration Manager for Health and Pharma<\/p>\n

Research and Innovation Services, University of Southampton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is easy to discard social media as another gimmick for big international companies to collect information about us or as a platform to promote insignificant exchange of information about our daily lives. \u00a0\u00a0The point has been made before, social media is a vast network and, yes, it promotes the dissemination of futile information, but it has something traditional media …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97581,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","column","twocol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/healthpharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}