Building an audience as a science communicator

Welcome to Episode 3 of The Communication Lab — where I’m going to teach you how to use social media for science communication (if you’re new to this series, start here).

This week we’ll start digging into the nuts and bolts of scicomm, beginning with selecting a social media platform and how to build an audience. The first step is deciding what and where: what kind of content do you want to create, and where do you want to share it?

Where should I post?

There is no right or wrong social media platform for science communication. All of them matter, and all are helpful if your goal is to share accurate health and science information. The best one for you is the one that fits with your style and intended audience. Here are a few things to consider:

• What type of content do I like making? (short text-based posts, longer articles with complete paragraphs, images/graphic design, videos?)
• What audience am I trying to reach? (younger people, older people, conservatives, liberals, professionals and academics, general audience?)
• What is the level of discoverability on each social media platform? (Discoverability is how likely it is for people who don’t already follow you to see your content. This is impacted by the overall number of users on the platform, the structure of the platform, and its algorithm.)
• Which platform do I like? (in my opinion, the most important question)

Pick which kind of content is the most fun and natural for you to create, then choose a social media platform based on that. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a quick overview of some popular options with strengths and weaknesses of each.