I recently came across a PEW Research
article, “Facebook and Science,” through a higher education peer group that I
belong to in Slack. Typically, social
media research and data doesn’t apply to my line of work unless it involves
video or educational applications, but the title of the article intrigued
me. Incidentally, my office (in higher
education) is currently expanding upon our coverage of stories related to
environmental sciences, data science, and engineering, so I felt that the
timing in which I discovered this research was fortuitous in nature.
I love science. Like most young children, I was fascinated by
space exploration, electronics, children’s science museums, and the way things
worked. But even today as a 30-year-old,
I still find myself spending my free time reading extensively about
engineering, tinkering on my motorcycles, learning about AI and VR, or
discussing the geometry and algebra inherent in carpentry with my wife, who, as
a math teacher, welcomes the conversation.
To me, it’s no surprise that science related pages are very popular on
Facebook. Science is almost a spectacle;
I’m making an assumption that a majority of people who aren’t scientists will
find the “news you can use” approach to science news most satisfying because it
gives them a small glimpse into how science is intertwined into their lives. (I
filmed a story about this very topic a while back: The Science of Mythbusters, below)
Of course, I ultimately read this article to
gain some perspective on how I could do my job a little bit better. How would I be able to pitch and craft better
science content for social media? Is
there data that would support my assumptions that shorter length is better,
more focused content is better, and that video is still king of social media
and is continuing to expand? In short,
yes.
Analysis of the types of posts yielding
the highest average of interactions shows that visual posts with little or no
text tend to yield more audience engagement than most other frames…The
most-engaging posts from either Facebook-primary or multiplatform pages during
this period included a wide range of topics and frames. Video was a common
feature of these highly engaging posts whether they were aimed at
explaining a scientific concept, highlighting new discoveries, or showcasing
ways people can put science information to use in their lives. (Pew Research,
2018. p. 5)
Now
keep in mind, I find much of this data to be true of any topic, not just
science related pages and posts.
However, Pew decided to focus solely on science and, as I mentioned
earlier, the research came at a time when I will be ramping up my production of
science related content. My key takeaway
from above is that video was very common in the highly engaging posts. People want and share visual content and it
also seems to be more eye catching for habitual scrollers. I would like to add, however, that while this
may be true of Facebook, it isn’t necessarily true of every platform. I personally think that this is the reason
why Instagram has become increasingly popular and will continue to grow rapidly
with IGTV as a key development tool.
Looking at user relationships to
science news, Pew referenced an earlier study that they conducted in 2017. “A 2017…survey found most social media users
in the U.S. report seeing science-related posts and a third (33%) consider it
an important way they get science news.
Some 44% of social media users say they see content unique to that
platform at least sometimes, and 26% of users report that they follow a
science-related page or account” (Pew Research, 2018. p. 5). This isn’t surprising, especially when you
take a peek at the chart they’ve included, which show a multiplatform content producers
publishing an estimated 18,600 posts per year across their channels. That’s almost 50 posts per day! If anything,
we can certainly assume that persistence is key to social media! But what makes this important to my job in
particular is that if we want to promote more science stories and content, we
need to embrace the capabilities of each
platform and potentially promote our content separately from our main channel.
The benefit would be that new users could subscribe to a consistent
science page that not only feeds an audience hungry for science content but
also showcases what our university excels at with discreet marketing/branding.
To further support my pitch to
creating separate social pages, Pew compiled a “Chart of Topic Concentration”
(p. 14) that, aside from demonstrating each page having a narrow focus, shows
engineering/tech and energy/environmental sciences as being the least covered
topics of the surveyed pages on Facebook.
The largest investment in either of the topics came from NASA for
energy/environmental sciences. Another
observation is that many (if not all) of the pages surveyed in the study use a
single frame for their stories (Pew, 2018.
p. 17). Doing so makes each story
less complicated for the audiences and more consumable. These findings led me to my consideration I
mentioned earlier for covering sciences separately from our main content and
embracing each platform.
But how would we cover these new
stories? “The bulk of posts across the
30 Facebook pages utilized one of three frames: news about a scientific
discovery or development, science-related “news you can use,” or a promotion
for a media program on another platform.” Although there are currently no
higher education institutions that I know of producing this type of single
frame content for specific pages, I see it as a real opportunity. There is no reason that my office can’t
produce a variety of consumable content using our professors to relay the
information. We already do that, in a
sense, and so do many other schools. The
key to making it work is to, again, create a separate following and embrace the
strengths of each platform. And more
important than having a separate page that will be focused on science content
is filling it with visuals.
An example of a science story I produced with a single frame and trending topic that was developed specifically for social media.
User
engagement with posts on science-related Facebook pages is more common for
visual posts, calls to action. While the most common frames for posts on the 30
science-related Facebook pages in this analysis feature new discoveries or
science “news you can use,” posts with more engagement – a term used to
characterize the number of user interactions with a post from shares, comments,
and likes or other reactions – tend to use other frames. Posts from the
first half of 2017 with the highest average number of interactions per post
used frames related to science research funding and pictures or other visual
display with little or no text. (Pew Research, 2018. p. 25)
I’m
not claiming to be a social media strategist, but I do have to advocate for the
type work that I do and video goes hand-in-hand with social media. I think that creating fresh video and photo
content within a new context is certainly worth exploring for any brand.
References
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/03/20160628/PS_2018.03.21_Facebook-and-Science_FINAL.pdf
