Improving Your Social Media Strategy

I coach a lot of researchers in the use of social media to translate their work. The most common question is about creating content/posting. They worry about the time need to find content, create it, and then post it. They worry that they will not be prolific enough. They worry their account will have peaks and troughs of posts.

And, that is all true. It is hard. It takes effort, and the accounts could have peaks and troughs of activity.

But that is thinking about each post as one individual event. Where something happens, and then you interrupt your schedule to get out your device a make a post.

But what if you did things differently? Instead of an event triggering a post, what happens if an event triggered you making a note, then continuing your work? The note would be the same place each time. It might be a hard copy notebook, filled in with a pen or pencil; dedicated only to ideas for social media. It could be a digital notebook; with photos or typed notes or both. Then, once per week you might review these notes. Spend 60 minutes writing posts for your social media (as many as you can). Pictures. Words. Video. The whole deal. Use a free scheduling tool and set them up to be sent out across the next seven to ten days. Now, social media doesn’t interrupt your day. Now, you capture good ideas for post, so they don’t become earworms. Now your social media channels have content on a regular, and frequent basis.

Improve your social media game by

using a scheduling tool to get posts out

during peak times of engagement.

A bit of background

Slow progress is still progress.

One percent better is still better.

The story of the tortoise, and the hare.

It took someone ten years to become an overnight success.

Death by 1,000 cuts.

The straw that broke the camel’s back.

These all allude to the same thing. That marginal gains, and losses are important to success and failure. Perhaps even essential.

James Clear talks about marginal gains in his book — Atomic Habits.

And Wendy Belcher doesn’t talk about marginal gains but applies the principle in her advice on Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. She even goes as far as to berate people who don’t adopt this approach. Defining binge writing and the associated stress that causes it and that it causes. A marginal gain is a small improvement to what you currently do. And the opposite, a small decline, is a marginal loss. The process of applying marginal gains is about looking at everything you do and trying to improve — even if it is just a 1% improvement. Because, through the power of compounding, that 1% could be worth 30 times as much in a year (1.01 365= 37.78).

Dr Richard Huysmans is the author of Connect the Docs: A Guide to getting industry partners for academics. He, in collaboration with Jane Anderson, has built the only LinkedIn program for research translation. He has taken that approach and delivers high quality practical advice to the education, research and government sectors in the use of social media for academic and career progress. He is driven by the challenge of helping researchers make use of practical tools for greater impact. He knows social media and how make it work for research.

To find out more, call 0412 606 178, email (Richard.huysmans@drrichardhuysmans.com) or subscribe to the newsletter. He’s on LinkedIn (Dr Richard Huysmans), Twitter (@richardhuysmans), Instagram (@drrichardhuysmans), and Facebook (Beyond Your PhD with Dr Richard Huysmans).

Originally published at https://www.drrichardhuysmans.com on August 10, 2020.