How to do effective public outreach
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Researchers certainly know a thing or two about time and effort. Hours and hours of their time is dedicated to their work, moving science forward in an attempt to find the next great discovery.
Now, like anyone, that time and effort should be rewarded – your work should be seen by the masses, but how?
Reader-friendly articles
You can’t use the same text to engage with the public that you would use to engage with your colleagues. Your work needs to be broken down, explained and made relevant with frequent examples and analogies. And it helps if you have accompanying visuals that are eye-catching and can be understood at a glance.
Video
According to current research, video is the way to go. Not only do videos currently generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined, but by 2019, internet video traffic is expected to make up 80% of all online traffic. That’s fairly staggering, so clearly one way to effectively reach the public is via video.
Now that could be through an animation, a short film, an interview – anything that brings your work to life in a visual way and relates to the public. After all, research also shows that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, so they will remember your work if it’s in that format.
Social Media
It’s also important to be active on social media and on a fairly regular basis. Whether it be sharing photos of your lab on Twitter or Instagram, or posting updates about your work on Facebook, to ensure effective public outreach, you need to generate a following who you can readily engage with on a consistent basis.
Personal Website
This ties in with another important tip – your own personal website. When someone types your name or area of research into Google, you want it to show up right? The best way to ensure that’s the case is via your own personal website. This can act as a hub for all your social media channels, and simply acts as an introduction to you and your world of research.
Whether you’re designing the website yourself, or using a paid website designer, make sure your website is clean and easy-to-use. Not too text-heavy, but making sure to utilise SEO key words, and with a colour scheme and interactivity that keeps the viewer engaged. You need to keep the user interested, and there’s no better way to do that than with a simple, effective personal website.
Watch our video below.
If you’re still feeling lost or confused about how to extend your public outreach, then have no fear. There are plenty of media agencies out there waiting to help you, including the writers of this blog post, Research Features. Read more about Research Features Magazine here.
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