When I was asked to help launch EFLA’s social media presence at the beginning of this year, I was excited, but somewhat wary. As a someone in my early twenties, social media played a huge part of my adolescence; using this experience, I had even helped run social media for other organizations I was working for. However, managing social media accounts that already have thousands of followers is much easier than starting from scratch, as we did with EFLA. As an organization, EFLA’s social media would also have to be run differently than a personal account, where followers consist of mainly friends and family, and posting a selfie every few weeks is enough to keep them interested.
These unique challenges brought forth many questions: What is the real purpose of social media for scientists? For EFLA? Who is EFLA’s target audience, and how do we reach them?
Bearing these questions in mind, we decided to start by making a plan. Our purpose, we decided, was to educate people about water issues and jobs in the water sector. Our audience would be primarily college students who might be interested in working in water, such as Civil Engineering or Environmental Studies students. We focused on Instagram and twitter, as they cater most to college-age users.
Even though I felt fairly versed in social media before working for EFLA, it was truly a learning experience for me. In preparing a content calendar, I learned about the social media “Rule of Thirds”, which dictates that organizations should divide their posts evenly between original content (ex. EFLA’s research deliverables), gaining followers (ex. Our “April Fool’s Water Jokes” campaign), and useful content from others in the same industry (ex. Water-related conferences or articles). We began using a social media manager to schedule posts in advance and collect data on how well they were performing.
I also became very aware of the professional and generational gaps that exist within social media. Like many other people my age, I use social media every day (sometimes despite my best efforts). The functions of various social media platforms as well as what content will be well-received sometimes seems obvious to me in a way that older generations might not find so intuitive. Similarly, tech-minded engineers, who are otherwise experts in water science and related issues, might struggle in thinking of ways to easily share the wealth of knowledge that they possess to non-experts.
Overall, starting EFLA’s social media campaigns has impressed upon me the usefulness of interdisciplinary teams and education. Scientific knowledge loses a lot of value when it is not communicated effectively or distributed widely. Although marketing is not in the wheelhouse of most STEM or other academic researchers, I think it is a skill that will only become more important as the digital age in which we live progresses.
Author: Samantha (Sami) Stroud, UNM Department of Geography student