CASE STUDY: #VISSOCMEDCONF

Social Media engagement and impact

FARIDA VIS | @flygirltwo

Using social media engagement for an event

#VisSocMedConf (500+ tweets on the day)

Social mediain academia

Some positive and negatives (Lupton, 2014)

• Connecting, establishing networks• External to academia• Promoting openness• Sharing information• Publicising research• Development of research• Receiving support

• Lack of privacy• Blurring of boundaries• Personal/professional use• Risk of jeopardising career

prospects• Lack of credibility• Quality of content• Time pressures• Social media becoming an

obiligation• Target of attacks• Too much self-promotion• Possible plagiarism• Commercialisation of content• Copyright issues

711 academic respondents. Most useful:

• Twitter (83%)• Academia.edu (23%)• Personal blog (16%)• Facebook (14%)• LinkedIn (14%)• Online referencing tools (11%)• YouTube (10%)• Multi-authored blog (7%)• Google+ (5%)• SlidesShare (5%)• Curation tools (4%)

My social media accounts + related• Twitter• Facebook• YouTube• Flickr• SlideShare• Tumblr• Storify• Pinterest• Mobypicture• Soundcloud• Ello• Blogs (Blogger and Wordpress)• Eventbrite• Slack• Dropbox• Google (various: docs etc.)• Bit.ly• Skype

The ones I use the most for work

• Twitter• SlideShare• Facebook• Dropbox• Skype• Bit.ly

Twitter: joined early 2010 (12k+ tweets)

Tweet about ‘everything’Only one public accountNo separate work TwitterFlygirl2/two since 1997

SlideShare: joined early 2011 (28 uploads)

• Academic – working on social media and Big Data (methods)• Have been studying social media for nearly a decade• Sometime data journalist for The Guardian• Co-author of the Data Journalism Handbook • Led social media analysis of ‘Reading the Riots on Twitter’ (2.5M) • Fellow recipient of inaugural Data Journalism Award (for Twitter

rumour visualization as part of Reading the Riots)• Now: verification – spread on (mis)information online• Key concern for the World Economic Forum (top ten trend for 2014)• World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Social Media• Border runner – talk/work across academia | government |

industry• Advising various research councils on funding social media research• New projects: Picturing the Social and Visual Social Media

Lab• MA module (semester 2): Researching Social Media (40 students

2012/2013; 65 students 2013/2014; 75 students 2014/2015)

Picturing the Social: transforming our understanding of images in social media and Big Data research

ESRC Transformative Research grant

(18-months, started in September 2014)

Main aim: trying to understand new social worlds

750 MILLION - 1.8 BILLION

IMAGES SHARED

DAILY

The project topic screams out for interdisciplinarity!

Farida Vis (PI) – Media and Communication

Simon Faulkner – Art History/Visual Culture

James Aulich - Art History/Visual Culture

Olga Gorgiunova – Software Studies/Sociology

Mike Thelwall – Information Science/software

Francesco D’Orazio – Industry/Media/software

+ Anne Burns – Visual Culture / Media Studies

Diverse, all stages of career + cross sector!

Creating social media content for the project

• News of funding confirmed: April• Start of the project: September• What needs to happen before September?• Recruit an RA• Start promoting the project • Start developing an engagement strategy• We want to share our work as widely as possible!• Build a website • Set up various social media accounts (+ Gmail)• First conference in early November! Yikes!!!

In June: press release (general info)

In June: proposal online (specific info)

In June: Twitter account (building a network)

In June: basic Blogger (still working on it!)

• Lab set up specifically for engagement purposes

• Different stakeholders• Picturing the Social is

the Lab’s first project• Lab will outlive project• Interdisciplinary team• International profile

Launch of Lab at US industry conference

Quick recap: what have we done so far?

• In run-up to project launch, we have:• Set up some social media profiles• Created some content and extra info• Have launched the Visual Social Media Lab• Have started engaging with key stakeholders• Have started building community• Have started engaging as early as

possible!!!

• Part of engagement strategy: tracking content

Using bit.ly to customise and track your links

Link Date # of shares

bit.ly/PtS_pressrelease 18 June 447

bit.ly/PicturingtheSocial_proposal 18 June 225

bit.ly/PtS_RApost 9 June 639

bit.ly/VisSocMedConf 6 October 362

bit.ly/VisSocMedConf_guide 31 October 194

bit.ly/VisSocMedConf_images 15 November 93

Press release: when was it shared?

Where was it shared? Mainly ‘unknown’

RA post: peaks in July and August

Mainly shared on Twitter: good to know?

Turning attention to the conference

Turning attention to the conference

• Used EventBrite• Included links to press

release and proposal for info

• Easy to communicate with participants

• Made a bit.ly link• Event fully booked

within day of release

Turning attention to the conference

• Hired a graphic designer to design:

• Conference poster• Logo for the Lab• Postcards for the Lab• Conference booklet• Shared all of this via

social media in run up to conference

Creating ‘buzz’ through regular updates

Another press release (piggy backing)

Set up further social media accounts

• Pinterest: to share images• SoundCloud: to share audio files• Storify: to share curated social media stories• Slideshare: to share presentation slides• NB – specifically linked to conference activities!

• For all: VisSocMedLab• All through same Gmail account• All same profile image and bio

Key conference engagement strategy

• Use social media to engage wide community• Use social media to increase visibility• Make active use of social media throughout• Get as much help as possible (@SheffSocScience)

Some additional strategies• Hire a photographer to take high quality images• Invite bursary recipients to write blog posts• Invite a conference ‘reviewer’ (high profile)• Make a plan for wrangling all this content!

Key conference engagement strategy

• Aim 1 : Share conference audio, slides and images within 2 weeks of conference.

• How did we do? Uploaded audio and images!• Due to huge popularity: will transcribe all talks.

• Aim 2 : Get all content curated with 4 weeks of conference. Write overall report and blog posts.

• How are we doing? Ok-ish. Should be doable!

* NB! Ask yourself if you have time to do all this! *

Crucial: start promoting your hashtag early!

#socmed = anything to do with social media

#Shefsocmed = Sheffield research community

#wefsocmed = World Economic Forum council

#vissocmed = Visual social media research

#VisSocMedConf

#VisSocMedConf• Use in all conference related bit.ly links: • Eventbrite link: bit.ly/VisSocMedConf• Made a list of all speakers’ Twitter handles• Used Eventbrite to send final message to

participants: highlighted the hashtag, Twitter listand promote the conference guide.

• Promoted the hashtag: - Across social media accounts- On the poster and in conference booklet- On the day itself – first slide of conference!

#VisSocMedConf

Lead byexample!

Tracking your impact: collect data immediately!

If searched now, 2.5 weeks later: data gone!

Important to know upfront

Useful rule: Twitter data disappears after 7 days!

Collect your data straight away!

You can then process it when you have time

But… don’t wait too long to do this!

Twitonomy: different types of reports available

How to define engagement? Same as the tool?

Activity a useful starting point, but more possible.

Did your hashtag ‘work’? Was it accepted?

Twitonomy: access to all the 522 tweets

Also access to some metadata (incl. URL!)

Beyond basic report: further analysis

Going beyond the basic engagement metrics

What are the key themes that were tweeted?

What did specific (important?) individuals tweet?

Any tweets/comments from people not at event?

How was event received? Any positive feedback?

Post event engagement: straight away

Publicly thank your speakers, audience and fellow

organisers, University, funders etc!

Seems obvious, but important not to forget!

Positive feedback: thank! Negative: address issues!

Manage expectations: when will content go online?

Anyone who missed out might be keen to know this!

Post event engagement: Audio up on SoundCloud within 7 days

Post event engagement: 150 images pinned within 14 days (took 6 hours though!)

Try to document/recapture experience

Networking in action

Engaged audience

Engagement and visibility ‘at home’

Making even more of your collected data!This data’s useful for analysis, but also for…

Putting archived content together in StorifyFor a long-term online record of the event

Lots of options for searching content

Search for the conference hashtag (again 2.5 weeks after the event)

Why only 4 results? How can that be?

What if I search on Twitter? More results still visible. How to get these in to Storify?

Data tool or via individual still visible tweets

So why can’t I see this in Storify?

There’s hope! If you know the tweet’s URL

Don’t search under Twitter! No results!

Enter the URL as an ‘Embed URL’

You can do the same with the pinned image

Put tweet and image together in your draft

Do the same with event feedback!

This is stuff you don’t want to lose!

Valuable additional data around your event

Key things to think about

What can you do in the run up to your event?

Are you comfortable using social media?

If not, who might be able to help you?

Is your audience on social media?

Key things to think about

What do you need to do on the day of your event?

What are your engagement aims?

What is your time-frame for delivering these?

What do you need to do immediately/week/month later?

Some of our outstanding jobs: with a month

Finish curating data on Storify (key archive)

Finish collecting all slides

Get all audio transcribed

Compile and share conference report

Some of our outstanding jobs: end of year

Finish our website!!!

Build database of key stakeholders

Send out first newsletter (MailChimp)

Write up report of engagement around first event

*** Save the date! 19 January 2015 ***

All day social media workshop

Social Media for engagement

Blogging for beginners

Measuring engagement

Altmetrics

Optional: Social media analytics for research

visualsocialmedialab.org

@VisSocMedLab

f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk

@flygirltwo

#GetEngaged#Shefsocmed!