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Episode 0012 Shownotes
Top reasons to be active on social media as a scientist
In this episode you'll learn why you should be active on social media as a scientist staying in academia or transitioning your career into business. Topics include serving yourself vs. your community (social listener, learner, curator, creator), choosing the right platform (LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Website etc.), assessing your one-time and regular effort and measuring your return on investment.
Listen to Prof. Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels as she shares actionable tips in this episode of the weekly PostdocTransformation show.
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Why are you on social media?
This is the question that you need to answer before you build your online profile and your presence regardless of the social media platforms, and especially if you are present on multiple platforms.
In this episode of the personal transformation show, I'll be putting together the top reasons to be active on social media as an early career scientist.
In hindsight, as a professor since 2014, I am very happy that I have started my online profile and presence on LinkedIn at least more than 10 years ago. But I've only started to be active on TikTok and Instagram two years ago, and I'm quite new to YouTube. I'm quite new to podcasting.
So, this is my take on it: I wish, I had been active on the other platforms much sooner. And I will be sharing my own reasons why I'm active on many different social media platforms and my own website. I have an online academy for career coaching: PostdocTransformation. So, there are some business goals also mixed into my probably more traditional role as a professor (for industrial & occupational psychology at the FOM Hochschule in Düsseldorf, Germany).
So, I'll be explaining each one of these facets as we go through this podcast episode. But the underlying theme is always to be a thought leader. To be inspiring, to be encouraging and to walk the talk for those, who are following me, who listen to me as my own bachelor & master students in real life, but also the PhD students and candidates who follow me in my business PostdocTransformation.
And beyond that, I also have some very loyal followers and also business partners. I would even say friends, because we support each other, we inspire each other, we network, even though we're not doing business together. But we are probably more like the gatekeepers and the door openers. So, for me, networking and being active on social media goes hand in hand.
I hope, that I can convince you about the top reasons to be active on social media as an early career researcher. Because now is the time to build a foundation from which you can then build your supportive network with business partners, industry partners. This way, you can, sooner or later, help your own students to find a job in whatever field that they desire. Because you know someone who knows (blank).
The four main categories
And from a meta level, they are categorizable along the lines of serving yourself versus serving your community, but also from a perspective of ascending or in the sense of efforts or intensity, and also return on invest.
1) Silent learning
Maybe you browse through the feed or even follow proactively a couple of accounts because of their interesting content that these creators provide. It's more like a silent reading, learning something through the content and also about the content creator, but you're not actively creating your own content. You're not becoming visible. And unless you filter and selectively follow people, you will be subjected to the feed (i. e. whatever the algorithm on that social media platform thinks is interesting for you because you are reading it, so in consequence, you will be fed more of that). So, that can be more or less strategic. But essentially, at least you are learning; you are there.
I recommend this at least to my Bachelor's and Master's students who haven't been active on social media before. Before you become active, you should at least be a silent learner.
2) Personal branding
Especially if you want to become visible for your own career, or even your career transition, you should create your personal brand. You want to become known as a thought leader, as the go to person, the expert or whatever. Someone who learns a new field and is eager to share about the new expertise, the new experience and learnings & the failures. You can show yourself to be vulnerable, to be teachable, everything that will help you to make a name for yourself in that niche, in that area, in that whatever topic you choose.
So, what's in it for you? If you would do this, then you will be showing yourself as someone who is employable, open for hiring or to do business with you. That means, that you are creating your own opportunities. You're not waiting to be applying for a job that is advertised on a job board, but instead, you are constantly showing yourself as someone who is approachable, who is knowledgeable, and who is always helping, to answer questions related to your expertise.
So, these two categories have in common that they are self-serving. You're serving yourself because you are learning something new, or you're serving-self because you brand yourself as the expert, etc.
But when we now switch to the other two categories, it's about serving your community, thinking of your target audience. Who are they? What are their needs? What are their needs? What are their goals? How can you help them to transform into someone, who can do this and that?
3) Curating for your own community
You're not really creating your own content yet. Instead, you will be following the share- worthy & follow-worthy creators, and then comment something smart on their content. You let your own community know about these people.
You're adding value for your community because you are making them aware and attend to the right content that they need.
And while you're doing this, and even though you're not actively posting your own content, you are still branding yourself, and are a learner of these new things you curate. And you can act as the trailblazer, and share that as one of the first.
4) Content creating
If you are creating for your community, you are constantly thinking about your ideal follower avatar. What are their goals? What are their needs? What are their interests? What are their aspirational identities? How can you help them to transform into that new identity?
You are creating, step by step, content regularly, on a consistent basis to help them achieve all that.
And at the same time, you can even do all previous three categories. But the fourth category really requires a lot of active engagement. Your return on this is also the biggest because you are learning, you’re personal branding yourself and you are curating.
That means, you are outstanding on all of these social media platforms. The content creators are the rare ones who create the content for the main users on a platform.
Social media platforms per use case
A) LinkedIn:
That’s best suited for business networking, especially if you are trying to reach a global audience. Compared Instagram or TikTok, it's a different culture on LinkedIn, because of the demographic. Typically, LinkedIn users who are experts, key decision makers or leaders have arrived in their positions. They have climbed the corporate ladder, because of their work ethic, their culture, their behavior. And that is mirrored on the platform itself. So, the people who are actively creating content on LinkedIn are probably the ones who are successful in their own right. They exhale that kind of culture also in their posts. That's why it's maybe a little bit funny or a little bit off for someone who enters the business world for the first time.
I’m on LinkedIn because I wanted to build a network for my own career transition (2008, right after my PhD in neuroscience). So, I started on LinkedIn when I was in grad school. No one told me and I learned by doing. My industry leap was into IT. IT people are also not braggy and they are more introverted, they're more like data, facts oriented.
Learning to post for them was easy to learn. And then while I climbed the corporate ladder, especially as a consultant where you need to network with a lot of people so that you can gain broader experience, get a broader access to other people who can help when I can't. LinkedIn has absolutely helped me to become someone who knows someone.
B) Instagram:
When I want to reach early career scientists, most of them aren't active on LinkedIn. How can I inspire them? Certainly not so much just using LinkedIn. So, I went to the pond where more early career scientists are, and the same applies to when I want to inspire and inform and entertain my own bachelor and master students in real life. The demographic is different. They're younger, their aptitude for social media, their requirements for social media are absolutely different.
And for me, it was like LinkedIn on steroids. When I went to Instagram, I was totally intimidated, even though I already had a followership of like 3000 on LinkedIn. And I grew that by 2000 by now, but at the same time I grew that my followers from zero to 2000 or so on Instagram (I have one account for my bachelor and master students in real life and one for PostdocTransformation).
That's a totally different world. So, much more visually appealing (challenging to create on a competitive level) on Instagram than on LinkedIn.
C) TikTok:
That's more leisure, off business fun, inspirational. Especially if you're looking for trending sounds or video ideas, you will find that abundantly in Tik Tok. However, you won't find a lot of people that you can impress for your career or for your business networking.
D) Website:
And probably the most opposite of that is your own website. You need a personal website, especially if you are becoming an established professor or if you want to impress someone in the business context (i. e. a recruiting or hiring manager showing yourself as the expert for branding purposes or how employable you are).
On your website, you can showcase all your transferable skills and showcase your work (research, scicomm outreach etc.). You can own your own domain, that's www.yourname.com or your domain www.whatever.com etc.
That's the hub and all the social media platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and what not) are the spokes. You can use your website as the home, as the trigger of something that will point then to all the social media platforms in different content pieces. And you can repurpose: You tell the story in different packages or variations. And also repurpose that across the timeline. Maybe within a week, you will disperse the same content piece from Platform A to B to C etc.
The main reason to build and run your own website as your home, is that you don't want to build a house on borrowed land. So, especially for Twitter, since Elon Musk took over, a lot of people. A lot of companies have reduced the ads spend on Twitter, and that means they're not looking on investing a lot of job ads or anything else on Twitter.
LinkedIn has gained traction among a lot of Twitter creators, so they went from Twitter to LinkedIn and building up their own presence there. But that's the same; LinkedIn is also not something you own. Instagram is not something you own, you just borrow. So, whenever they change the algorithm(s), you are subjected to that.
If you are someone who wants to create a lot, you should have a website.
If you don't want to create a lot, you don't need one. So, it depends on your own purposes, goals, whether you need one or not.
Because if you are a budding early career scientist, it might be enough to have a personal page on your university's page. Usually, every research team, every lab or even project has its own website and you can then have your own page.
Oh, btw, do you or someone else you know need Eleonore to improve the CV, cover letter, assess suitable job ads? We will practice job interviews and contract negotiations for landing the first job in business asap (to avoid wasting months and opportunity costs)? Then our PostdocTransformer Bundle is perfect!
Who do you serve as your community?
When I spoke about the four categories, I also talked about serving a community. So, either you're curating or you're creating content for your community. You need to define the community that you're serving.
Maybe your community is your students, your bachelor and master students. If you want to build industry partnerships for your research and also for your students, then the community extends to industry partners, fellow academics, so that you can exchange ideas on how to teach or how to research and collaborate.
But it also should extend for supporting students contacting or staying in touch with hiring managers of other universities (if they want to become a PhD student), and also with companies, because these companies might need students like yours.
If you are researcher who needs material, then you may want to consider networking with suppliers.
If you are a professor who has a side business you may also want to reach out to new leads and you want to reach out to and nurture existing clients.
So, these are all the people you should consider as your ideal follower, your ideal audience or ideal community avatar.
You should group them, because these avatars have different goals, needs, interests, and they also digest the information (even the same information) in different ways, at different times, in different preferred formats.
So, you need to derive the platforms based on who you want to serve, and how you want to serve them on which platform. Because some of your ideal followers are only on some platforms. Depending on how diverse your community is, that you want to serve, you probably need to extend to more than one platform.
The Corona crisis made me discover Instagram
That was a lot of theory, and now I'll speak about my own experience during the corona crisis. I accidentally stumbled into Instagram, because I was actually a LinkedIn person. I've grown up in my professional life with LinkedIn. I was able to use that. My intention was never to become a content creator. But instead, I just wanted to network and build a connection with the people that I'm working with or that I was, you know, serving or whatever.
But then Corona hit us all. We went into lockdown. I'm a professor who is very techie. It's easy for me to create the technical setup for Zoom, WebEx sessions, online lecture on whatever it is. But for me, being a professor also means to connect and to support my students between the lines of the script.
I always wanted to support them, and I wanted to edutain them in the breaks or between each of the lectures within a couple of weeks. And I missed that and I know that this is more important than the script itself.
I tried to find a way. I stumbled into Instagram because I thought “How can I serve my students? Either I drag them to LinkedIn, or I find out, where they are”. Most of them are on Instagram. So, this is why I went to Instagram, where I had a huge learning curve.
If you look into my Instagram handle, @professordreleonore, you can see scrolling down in my feed that I have never deleted anything. My first posts and my first videos are really cringe worthy. They don't have a thumbnail, they don't have a storyline. All my first attempts were failures, when you look at it from a non-learning perspective. Instead, I'm proud to be there. I know it's cringe worthy, but without that I wouldn't be learning. I'm a serial learner. I'm a serial transitioner. I always do something new in a series so that I can learn from my mistakes and make better content in the next season (iteration).
So, when you look into my Instagram versus my LinkedIn profile, you will see that I'm serving my communities differently, I use a different language. I try to meet my avatar where they are and how they probably need my information. And that's always something career specific.
I personally wouldn't be harsh or judgmental on myself. I left everything (the cringeworthy content) there. I'm proud of my early work, and my own students nudge me to try Reels or particular trends. They are rooting for me. They know that I'm going above and beyond for my students. They know that and they will also help me to create better content for them and the forthcoming student generations. So, it's a give and take, to be visible and to show that I'm also teachable.
And I actually thought that that's a nice trade-off or benefit. In the lecture, I'm the one with the power, I have the knowledge, I have the skills. I teach my students what to do, how to do it, why they should do this. Instead, this power relation is absolutely changed, in Instagram or TikTok. Because there, they are probably the ones who are more able than me, and they can teach me and they see me fall, they see me fail. They see me standing up again, learning and also thriving. So, I think this is something they see in a couple of weeks across the whole semester, that they can achieve something because they see me doing it and learning.
So, they see me role modeling a personal transformation that they can emulate. And from a meta level because I'm a professor of industrial & occupational psychology, I also teach about leadership and reverse mentoring, servant leadership etc. I am walking the talk and working out loud.
Social media is work
And working out loud is the next prompt for me. The name of the game of social media is “work”. Social media is work. I think that social media like in science communication is a skill that you need to learn in today's time. You need to be able to use social media to your own benefit and to the benefit of your students and your industry partners.
If it's not you, who should be the face of your own work? That means you have at least a onetime investment (creating a compelling profile) but you also have a regular investment (listening, branding, curating and/or creating); depending on your own career stage and your own goals and what you want to achieve with that.
You need to think about whether you want to outsource that. But even if you outsource that you need to be thinking the strategy behind that. Once the thinking has been done, the doing is easy and you are able to delegate it.
However, if you delegate it, your learning curve is shorter and flatter, and impacts your return. If you are the one who wants to transition the career from A to B, from science to industry or from industry to another industry, then you need to do the work. Only then you can learn while you're getting to know the people you are connecting with.
If you aspire to become a well-known reputable professor, then obviously maybe you don't need so much to do the groundwork, and especially as a regular investment. You can find people who can do that for you.
But either way, once the strategy is set, you need to think about the key performance indicators. All your efforts that need to be measured regularly. You need to look into your analytics to see whether you are reaching a goal of, e. g. growing an audience, gaining followers, every week, month, quarter or year. This way, you can listen to your audience and correct the course to deliver the content in the format that they prefer. This being said, the return on invest is not so much about vanity metrics, but instead it should be the valuable connections that you are making and nurturing along this journey.
And the more experienced you are, you will find that this is not a lonesome journey, but it can be fruitful through collaborations with other professors with other early career scientists, with other content creators.
And I hope I've inspired you to think about your potential social media engagement in a more thorough way from a strategic perspective. It's absolute fun for me, but I acknowledge that I have a technical background. I was a former IT strategy consultant at Accenture. So, for me, learning and building the tech behind, the whole infrastructure is fun and relaxing. Maybe it's challenging for you and you need to find someone you can delegate that to. Remember, the strategy behind that should be yours and not someone else's. And that's maybe also an investment that you can do in your PhD years. So, remember to invest into your doctorate according to your vision of life so that you will manage your postdoc transformation, as early as possible.
Oh, you are convinced to become more active on social media, but don't have the time? How about batch-creating your content for your social media platforms, plan & schedule them for a month ahead and automate posting them later daily, or 2-3 times a week at times best for your audience while you decrease your stress at the time of posting? How? Check out Later, the software we use for PostdocTransformation content planning and scheduling. Let us know, if you have further questions on that matter!
Thanks for listening,
Eleonore & Team PostdocTransformation
P. S: What are your thoughts or even questions regarding this episode on the top reasons for being active on social media? Please let us know, as we prepare to celebrate our first PostdocTransformation show season with 3 lives (one on LinkedIn, one Instagram and on TikTok):
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