In the modern digital landscape, social media is the first way many people will hear about you and your organization. So it’s crucial to consider not just where you want to be, but what you want say once you’re there.
Strategy
At the Genomic Surveillance Unit, MalariaGEN, ScienceUpFirst, and CIFAR, I was responsible for social media strategy.
That included selecting the channels to pursue, the tone to use, the cadence of updates, and what those updates would contain. Depending on the audiences we were trying to reach, I championed different tactics that got the results we needed.
Here are a few of my favourite successes on social:
ScienceUpFirst, Art Alongside: We commissioned 13 artists from 9 different provinces across Canada to make a piece of digital art representing a different theme of good communication practice: empathy, audience, storytelling, etc. We tapped into the artists’ networks, and built new audiences outside of the normal science-y spaces in major cities.
MalariaGEN 20th Anniversary: To celebrate 20 years since the first meeting of this international research network, I created a series of LinkedIn carousels and Twitter threads with diverse perspectives on the impact of the network. To create it, I interviewed 11 researchers from 11 different countries and edited their words into a digestible format that raised the profile of MalariaGEN and tripled engagement compared to the previous month.
How to annoy an entomologist: To mark World Mosquito Day, I created a tongue-in-cheek quiz to point out how often the wrong mosquito is used to illustrate stories about malaria. It got more engagement than anything else MalariaGEN had posted that year.
Multilingual posting
At CIFAR and ScienceUpFirst, as Canadian government-funded initiatives, we needed to post everything in English and in French. I learned that building a social audience across different languages is a difficult challenge that requires serious dedication.
But it’s worth it.
At ScienceUpFirst, we went one step further than straight word-for-word translation, employing a full-time French content producer who could achieve the friendly tone we needed.
Execution and tools
Having worked in and led small teams, I’ve never been far from the actual writing, designing, editing, and posting of daily social media activity.
I’ve used Hootsuite and Sprout for analytics and to manage posting across channels, and Canva and Adobe products to create images and videos. For project management, Asana is king, and nothing beats a Google Doc for drafting and copy-editing.
Jon Farrow 