A key benefit that social media can bring to social science
research is through impact and engagement. Demonstrating how a research project
will achieve impact and engage the public is a key requirement of most social
science research bids today, with many funders looking for more than the
traditional conference and journal article as being sufficient. Funders today
want to see not only how your research will contribute to the current body of knowledge,
but also how your research could impact other areas of academia as well as
providing public engagement and economic and societal wide benefits.
To promote your research to the widest possible audience, it is
often necessary to use a number of Social Media platforms in order to access
different populations. It is also now possible to measure this level of engagement
through the use of web analytics with the two most common social media
platforms (Facebook
and Twitter)
both providing free access to analytic software for their users. Managing the
content and evaluating the impact of a number of social media platforms can however
become tiresome and laborious, an issue overcome by the use of a Social Media Management
System (SMMS).
The benefits of using a SMMS are vast and take the hassle out of
managing multiple social media platforms for your research for a reasonable
yearly subscription. There are many SMMS on the market today with an example
that I am currently using on a project being Hootsuite. This particular SMMS provides a
research team the benefits of:
1.
Scheduling – Researchers are busy
people and have little time to manage multiple social media accounts. With a
SMMS you can schedule posts to be sent to multiple social media platforms at times
of the day known to deliver the largest impact.
2.
Enhanced analytics – The standard
analytics of the accounts included in the SMMS are available in one place,
alongside extra features including Google Analytics and Klout scores.
3.
Streams – These provide the
opportunity to keep up to date with features of your accounts such as your newsfeeds,
retweets, mentions, hashtag usage plus many others.
4.
Multiple Authors – Multiple authors
can be added to the system taking the responsibility away from one member of
the team.
5.
RSS/Atom feeds – You can keep up with
updates of other websites related to your research by adding the RSS/Atom feeds
to the system.
By adopting the use of a SMMS a research team has a centralised,
hassle free dashboard in which to create and post content alongside evaluating
its impact. Each management system comes at a different price and includes different
features, however most will take the hassle out of managing your social media
platforms and provide greater opportunities to evaluate your research impact.
