Using Social Media - What Works?

Social media is now a key way that people connect with one another, so how can we use social media to effectively engage the public with research?

The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) has worked with public engagement professionals and researchers from across the UK to co-develop:

‘What works: Engaging the public through social media’ 

The guide tackles:

• Why use social media? - this includes a focus on the benefits of engaging via social media
• Getting started – a useful flow chart for considerations when planning social media engagement
• Applying quality engagement principles – engagement via social media is the same as any other activity; you need to know your purpose and audience
• Choosing the right tools – with an ever growing number of platforms, which will work best for you?
• Making shareable content – want to reach your intended audience? This section will help you to create content that your audience will want to share
• Evaluation and impact – tips for planning and implementing evaluation of your social media usage
• Risks and how to manage them – engaging via social media isn’t risk free. This section will help you consider the risks and how to mitigate them
• Resources – this section includes engagement examples, reports, blogs, articles, online resources and guides, crowdsourced from the contributors
• Top tips – provided by our expert contributors

The guide was produced using the ‘what works’ process, which crowdsources intelligence and resources around different engagement topics to then synthesis into a useful guide. Find out more about the ‘what works’ process.