1.
Central Clinical School
Social media for scientists:
Boosting your impact
Julia Veitch
Marketing & Communications, Central Clinical School, Monash University
17 September 2014

2.
Social media for scientists 17 September 2014 2
Central Clinical School
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

3.
Central Clinical School
Part 1: Overview of social media
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.
17 September 2014

4.
Figure 1. Monthly potential audience by communication methodology – capacity to amplify
White fill - social media
Grey fill - traditional
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:d
oi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535
Social media for scientists
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

5.
“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.
http://melissaterras.blogspot.com
.au/2012/04/is-blogging-and-tweeting-
about-research.html
Social media for scientists 5
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

6.
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.
• http://cameronwebb.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/can-social-media-increase-the-exposure-
Social media for scientists 6
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)
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

7.
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
Social media for scientists 7
to amplify
17 September 2014

8.
FODMAP app downloads
Cross-promotion
benefit:
Oct 2013 peak
with FODMAP
public lecture
promotions
Presentation title 8
Central Clinical School
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
2013 FODMAP public lecture (N=488
43%
17%
17%
11%
7%
survey respondents)
Website
Social media
Word of mouth
University
SIG
Advertisement or notice
Natalie Nott
Medico referral
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Dec-12
Jan-13
Feb-13
Mar-13
Apr-13
May-13
Jun-13
Jul-13
Aug-13
Sep-13
Oct-13
Nov-13
Dec-13
Jan-14
Apple
Android
17 September 2014

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Social media for scientists 9
Central Clinical School
Platforms used by CCS:
Website: Content Management System
Stable repository of institutional, quality controlled information
Social media
Flexible, 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)
17 September 2014

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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
Presentation title 17 September 2014 10

11.
Social media for scientists 11
Central Clinical School
CCS public
website
Social media linked -
Feed & share widgets
used e.g. youtube, twitter.
Web viewing stats –
100 views/week to
30,000 views/week
in 3 years – spikes are
media stories
17 Sept 2014

12.
Social media for scientists 12
Central Clinical School
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 creation
of new entries & mailout.
Traffic out = Traffic in
17 Sept 2014

13.
Social media for scientists 13
Central Clinical School
CCS Twitter
• Feed from CCS Youtube
channel
• Broadcasts CCS news
• Publications scheduled from
Faculty monthly pubs lists
• Searchable within Twitter
• Linked back to information
sources
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
17 September 2014

14.
CCS followers by Department (N=35)
MAPrc
28%
Admin
24%
Inf. Diseases
Social media for scientists 14
Medicine
7%
4%
Immunology
17%
Gastro
10%
NTRI
4%
Baker
3%
ACBD
3%
Central Clinical School
@CCSMonash followers
All followers segmented (N=443)
Individual
44%
Organisations
16%
SIG
13%
CCS
Monash
6%
Media
5%
17 September 2014

15.
Central Clinical School
CCS youtube channel home page
Social media for scientists 15
Content:
• HODs
• Research
• 3MT
• Student
profiles
• Events
Deployed:
• Web pages
• Blog
• Pinterest
• Google+
• Events
Statistics
• 76 video clips
• 28,500+ views (15,000 FODMAP)
• 133 subscribers
• Videos sell themselves –
post them and they have
a life of their own
17 Sept 2014
Dec 2013 FODMAP
lecture upload
Aug 2014 recipe upload
for Catalyst broadcast

16.
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Central Clinical School
CCS Google+ social media hub page
Content:
• 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
17 September 2014

17.
Central Clinical School
Part 3: Case study – Professor T.R. Vidyasagar
Social media for scientists 17
Twitter
If you start leading, people will start following.
Youtube
A visual blog, with a much longer life than
a 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
17 September 2014

18.
Social media for scientists 18
Tweet build & impact
Link 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 easier
to find
Twitter ‘handle’
or name – make
it obvious
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

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Presentation title 19
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
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

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Social media for scientists 20
Central Clinical School
Youtube
Setting up the channel & entry – links, links, links
17 September 2014

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Results
Views 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.
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.
Youtube views Paper views
1/12/13 Silvia’s RT
of Sagar’s video
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
Downloads
Views
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.
Social media for scientists 21
30/11/13
Sagar’s tweet of
his video
5 day blocks
0
1 2 3 4 5
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

22.
• What enables it? In real estate, the mantra is ‘Location, location, location’. In the
Social media for scientists 22
Central Clinical School
Summary
• What drives web & social media traffic?
Traffic out Traffic in; Capacity to share
digital world, it’s ‘Links, Links, Links’
• 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 is bad for authors? Time consuming, potential to be ‘trolled’. See
appendices for lists of pros and cons.
17 September 2014

23.
The CCS comms team & what we do
Presentation title 23
Central Clinical School
Julia Veitch julia.veitch@monash.edu x30026
• Fulltime
• Developing & managing all aspects of CCS comms
Vithya Premkumar vithya.premkumar@monash.edu x30368
• 12 hrs/week
• Systems set up, support, cms, enews, intranet, calendars etc
Dussy Kuttner dussy.kuttner@monash.edu
• 12 hrs/fortnight
• Journalism, social media
17 September 2014

24.
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
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
Social media for scientists
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

25.
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
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/inf
o:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535
Social media for scientists
• Who
• Why
• How
• Time
Central Clinical School
17 September 2014

26.
Appendix Figure 3. Common online communication fears and suggested solutions
Wasting time [JV add]
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
Social media for scientists
Work with your
Communications
officer to save time
and to link into other
bigger networks
Central Clinical School