You are a scientist and would like to become active on social media yourself? Aside from getting an SMM panel to help you grow your reach, here are four important social media tips you should know! So, let’s go!
1. Develop a social media strategy
When planning a project or a series of experiments, you should research, set your goals, and plan in detail. Believe it or not, the same goes for social media. The first thing you need to do is decide what you want to achieve with social media. Your strategy results from this. For example, do you want to be seen as an influencer in the lab? Or would you like to start a group for your alumni network? Or perhaps develop a personal brand identity for entry into the industry? Whatever it is, decide what your goal is.
2. Choose a suitable platform
Choosing a platform is not that easy, especially with such a large offer. But if you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with social media, then the choice is relatively easy. My personal favorite is LinkedIn because it’s the best place to create a serious and professional profile and keep posts relevant for a long time. LinkedIn is great for finding a job and with the message function you can get in touch with well-known scientists from all over the world. You might even find your dream job on LinkedIn. Twitter is ideal for scientists and especially good for extensive conversations. Real-time updates of conferences and events can be shared very well via Twitter.
Instagram is a relatively new platform and while it’s interesting for all ages, it’s more aimed at a younger audience, like graduate students and undergraduate students. This makes Instagram ideal for arousing the interest of young scientists. As the old saying “Olden is Golden” says, 85% of Generation Y still use Facebook. While LinkedIn offers good group features, Facebook still has advantages when it comes to connecting groups of people, announcing events, and sharing daily updates.
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3. Create interesting content
Now that you’ve chosen a platform, it’s time to create and publish content! Instagram & Facebook are more visual, which means you have to practice taking good pictures and videos. Invest in a camera, or at least a smartphone capable of taking good photos and videos. If you have beautiful images, Canva & remove.bg are great programs to improve them. They help you turn snapshots in the lab into suitable photos that will delight your followers. You can keep it fun and entertaining and also post some appropriate personal content. While Twitter is moving toward visual content, it’s still mostly text-based.
On Twitter, share not only the thoughts of others, but your own creative ideas, and remember to use the most important and relevant hashtags to improve the success of your tweets. Original content is very popular on LinkedIn! Have someone photograph you in the lab, at a conference, or when meeting your favorite scientist and write a post about it. While you can post some fun things on LinkedIn, that your future employer might be watching, you should keep that in mind before you post anything.
4. Time & patience
As my father says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and it also takes time to build and develop your profile. It takes a great deal of patience and a mix of time and dedication to get your profile the way you want it to be! Post-high-quality content at regular intervals. Tools like Hootsuite can help you and remind you to post a funny lab cat picture again!