Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016
Toot your own horn
Self-Promotion in social media
Liz Neeley
Many writers have been raised to believe that their work should stand on its own, that self-promotion is both self-centered and counterproductive. But on the Internet, these activities are not vanity but a necessity. Liz Neeley, executive director of The Story Collider, will show you the power of self-promotion.
Congratulations! That is a solid post you just finished. It may not be perfect, but it is done, and you should feel good. Nobody writes a research blog about topics they don’t care about, so let’s not make light of the hours (days? weeks?) of work you have invested to this point. But publishing your post is just the beginning. Now it’s time to promote it.
Ugh, self-promotion. Everyone knows those people, the relentless self-promoters, and everyone knows how we tend to describe them. But what they do works. You need to get your ideas in front of as many interested people as possible, and more importantly, you want to get your ideas in front of us in such a way that we will read, remember, and respond to them. You need our attention, but our attention is an incredibly valuable resource.1 Consider the multitude of delicious (baking cookies), important (writing), or helpful (walking my dogs) things I could be doing at this moment. Reading your post comes with a price. If I choose to read it, I have chosen not to do all those alternatives. If I open up your post and start to read it, I’ve already made a calculation in your favor—I believe that what I’m about to read is going to be worth the opportunity cost. Maybe it’s because whatever I saw (a tweet, a Facebook post, perhaps simply the post title) piqued my interest. Maybe I’m basing my decision on my knowledge of other things you’ve written. Either way, your self-promotion is a promise to me, one of your potential readers, that your work will be worth my attention.2
Why self-promote?
As with any communication challenge, before you can effectively decide about the “how” of self-promotion, you have to design a strategy that clarifies the “why.” There is a wide range of personal motivations for getting into science blogging, but broadly speaking, the ultimate goals usually include influencing opinions, driving the social agenda, and advancing our collective knowledge.3 Whether you are blogging about sophisticated theories of change and logic models, or keeping things relatively simple, you’ll need a clear understanding of why you are blogging, who will likely read each post, and what you want your readers to do afterward.4 Strategic self-promotion is critical for achieving these proximate goals in your overall strategy: members of your target audience cannot read your work, for example, if they don’t know you exist. It can also bring indirect benefits like positioning you as an authority and raising your professional profile, both of which can trigger a cascade of more and better invitations to speak, collaborate, and advance your career.
Self-promotion is necessary. But for many of us, there is a deep-seated belief that while the work of content creation is noble, the work of drawing attention to your content is distasteful if not degrading. Our aversion to self-promotion is an emotional reaction, exacerbated by the suspicion (particularly if you are female) that the usual advice for increasing traffic—repetition, jumping into comment threads to mention your post, direct requests to retweet—can annoy the very people you hope to impress.5 In the past five years, I’ve taught social media to hundreds of researchers in dozens of workshops, and I have never had a discussion about self-promotion that didn’t feel at least a little uncomfortable. To reassure researchers about how reasonable and utterly normal this is, I’ve made a series of slides with my Google search results when I start typing the phrase, “Promote yourself . . .” The first five suggested auto-completions include “without being sleazy,” “without being a jerk,” and “without talking about yourself.”6 No one wants to look like a selfish, self-involved jerk, but early successes tend to snowball, so the cost of keeping quiet compounds over time. As my mom said to me on the eve of my high-stakes election for sixth-grade class government, “Honey, if you don’t vote for yourself, why should anybody else?” The bottom line: when it comes to self-promotion online, refusing to engage is not taking the moral high ground, it is self-sabotage.
The “How”
Right now, the biggest players in the science communication landscape are blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube, and they all provide fertile ground for research. The emerging field of content virality is fascinating.7 It’s interesting (and maybe even important) to understand why Upworthy headlines are so successful, or what time of day is best for maximizing retweets.8 Yet it seems that we are best at discussing what precise combinations of Internet architecture, social network topologies, and the human brain have combined to make something blow up only in hindsight. We don’t know how to deliberately design viral success, despite what the gurus and mavens may say.9 Even worse, no one can guarantee which platforms and networks are going to offer the best return on your investment. Success seems to be a singular history of trial, error, luck, personal preference, style, and timing.
To take just a few examples, while I was writing this chapter, there was a portentous shift of staff and resources at Google+, and a high-profile piece in the Atlantic eulogizing Twitter.10 Within the month of this writing, Twitter redesigned its user profiles, while Facebook and YouTube have updated their looks and algorithms in ways big and small.11 We are in the midst of a period of rapid change, and what it means for self-promotion is hard to say. If we can stay flexible and hungry, we may find it easier to navigate each new wave and to seize first-mover advantages. But maybe we just have to accept that we’re in the midst of a great uncertainty. I’m reminded of this quote from Clay Shirky: “[People] are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.”12
We must approach outreach efforts with the same skepticism and rigor that we bring to science in the first place. That means embracing an experimental mindset. I’m inspired by Portland (Oregon) art and design firm Wieden + Kennedy, which emphasizes both the essential role of taking creative risks (to generate new ideas) and rapid prototyping (to test those ideas and move on quickly if they aren’t good). In its entryway, a glittering wall of pushpins traces out FAIL HARDER while a mannequin with a blender for a head exhorts “Walk in stupid every morning.” In interviews, founder Dan Wieden explains, “While you were sleeping, the world you’re now inhabiting has changed somehow. It might be a big change, a small change, but don’t assume anything. . . . Find out what’s going on with your partners, with clients.”13 In your promotions, as well as your work, use the best available data to stay fresh and relevant.
How? Start taking advantage of free Google Analytics to get a handle on where your traffic is coming from. People are going to come across your post by one of two distinct paths: intentional search or serendipitous discovery.14 It’s a discovery problem, whether your audience knows they are looking for your content or not, so in either instance, promotion across multiple social media networks will help you cast a wider net. You can do basic A versus B testing with minimal effort (for instance, by simply employing different styles of tweets), and there are plenty of great resources for building a dashboard.15 At a minimum, Google Analytics on your blog can help you decide where you want to focus your efforts, and whether you’re seeing any differences as a consequence. Hypothesize. Test. Adapt. Rinse and repeat as you experiment with the following advice.
Be authentic
This book has a chapter about finding your voice: go (re)read it. Now apply that same thinking to your promotional efforts. Play to your strengths. If you’re funny, be funny! If you’re not . . . please don’t try. It’s exhausting to attempt to be something you’re not. Authenticity is an important component of likability and credibility in online interactions.16 Earlier I described self-promotion as making a promise to readers. At COMPASS one of our touchstones is the saying, “You only get in trouble with people when you f*ck with their expectations.” In short, your promotion should be a reflection of your authentic and unique style. There’s no single proper way to do this, so you have to be true to yourself.
Focus on conversations
A simple way to start pointing people to your work is to find those who are already searching for it or talking about similar topics. Search for keywords and jump into open discussions: if you’re an ecologist, for example, find other ecologists, follow and comment on their blogs, and start conversations with them on Twitter. The basic premise of conversations is that they include both listening and contributing. Instead of shouting “Read my stuff! Read my stuff!” start by figuring out who might be happy to learn about it. Each platform has slightly different mechanics and norms, but at a minimum, you want to be using the right hashtags and following the correct circles/subreddits/pages/groups.
You don’t have to wait for a question to be asked directly of you. You also don’t have to confine yourself to your most recent post. Even in the relentless churn of content online, freshness is trumped by great material, and sometimes the valuable resource is not a post at all, but you. One of my favorite examples of natural and useful self-promotion is this tweet from Jacquelyn Gill: “@edyong209 @carlzimmer @Laelaps I’ve got an alternative hypothesis about this paper if you’re writing it up! http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7486/pdf/nature12921.pdf.”17 She knew that Ed, Carl, and Brian might cover a new Nature paper, and that journalists are always looking for expert critique and commentary on a new finding. Timely, topical, helpful: it’s on point. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you’ll never get better at it if you don’t take the chances as they arise.
Add Value
Think bigger than just your own content. You might find that you can better serve the topics you care about by starting a hashtag, tweeting other people’s posts, or moderating a community. Similarly, you might Storify a great conversation, a Google+ hangout, or an event. Curation may be an exhausted buzzword, but it is a fundamental way to demonstrate credibility, structure complex information, and highlight material with lasting utility. Plus it is faster than content creation, and it tends to spark new ideas, so it can be a viable strategy for staying active when you’re swamped and for staying fresh when you’re less inspired.18
Think about your network
The self-promotion dilemma pops up when we don’t want to be “that person” who is self-aggrandizing, but we know that likable modesty sacrifices attention and career opportunities. The science-based solution is to cultivate networks of people who will promote your work for and with you.19 Having third parties speak and write on your behalf will increase your perceived likability and competence, while boosting your visibility in networks beyond your own.
You might activate your network by doing something as minimal as including the phrase “please retweet.” There is some evidence that simple tweaks in phrasing can boost considerably retweets and click-throughs.20 Similarly, asking influential users to share content can give you a huge boost. You should use this tactic sparingly, however. Is it an important post to you? Is the person someone you know well and/or someone with whom you share a deep interest in the topic? Then it makes sense to ask for support. Otherwise, perhaps it is better to ask for feedback, to link to or mention those doing related work, or otherwise to deepen the broader conversation. This blended approach is more effective than relentlessly pushing your own stuff.
For bloggers in particular, credibility is built as much through a kind of networked authority as it is through personal expertise.21 In other words, no blogger is an island, so be a good citizen. Say thank you. Acknowledge those whose work you use or who have inspired you, and reciprocate when possible. Sure, page views and mentions are important, but these are really only proxies for something else. That something else is social capital: the goodwill, sympathy, and trust that manifest in support and action. This is the ultimate goal of self-promotion.
Promote the message
Self-promotion is not a way of asking readers to do you a favor. We are all hungry for great content, so you are truly doing us a favor by helping us find yours. More than a year ago, I wrote, “’So Tweet This, Maybe?’—Promoting Your Work in Social Media.”22 I use the post in my teaching and I don’t shy away from linking back to it when appropriate.23 I don’t know whether it is the reason I was invited to contribute this chapter, but I’m certain it helped. That’s the power of self-promotion. Done well, self-promotion is acting in service of your ideas, not just clamoring for affirmation. Finding your voice, focusing on great content, and positioning it effectively can create positive spirals that benefit your work and your career. You have great ideas. Get over yourself, get out there, and help us discover them.
Liz Neeley is the executive director of The Story Collider. Prior to that, she was the assistant director of science outreach for COMPASS, creating and leading science communication training sessions around the country that emphasize both traditional and social media. She has also taught science communication at the University of Washington.
Liz is based in Seattle. Find her on her website at http://www.lizneeley.com, or follow her on Twitter, @LizNeeley.
Notes
1. Michael H. Goldhaber, “Attention Shoppers!,” Wired, December 1997, http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html.
2. Glenn Llopis, “Personal Branding Is a Leadership Requirement, Not a Self-Promotional Campaign,” Forbes, April 8, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/glenn llopis/2013/04/08/personal-branding-is-a-leadership-requirement-not-a-self-promotion-campaign.
3. Inger Mewburn and Pat Thomson, “Why Do Academics Blog? An Analysis of Audience, Purposes and Challenges,” Studies in Higher Education 38, no. 8 (2014): 1105—1119, doi:10.1080/03075079.2013.835624; Hauke Riesch and Jonathan Mendel, “Science Blogging: Networks, Boundaries and Limitations,” Science as Culture 23, no. 1 (2014): 51—72, doi:10.1080/09505431.2013.801420; Marie-Claire Shanahan, “Science Blogs as Boundary Layers: Creating and Understanding New Writer and Reader Interactions through Science Blogging,” Journalism 12, no. 7 (2011): 903—919, doi: 10.1177/1464884911412844.
4. “What Is Theory of Change?,” Center for Theory of Change, accessed February 13, 2015, https://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change.
5. For three very different but complementary perspectives, try this combination: Ninja_OT, comment on Reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/com ments/1eysyr/whats_the_most_annoying_thing_about_social; Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell, “Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, no. 10 (2008): 1303—1314, doi: 10.1177/0146167208320061; Janie M. Harden Fritz, “How Do I Dislike Thee? Let Me Count the Ways: Constructing Impressions of Troublesome Others at Work,” Management Communications Quarterly 15, no. 3 (2002): 410—438, doi: 10.1177/0893318902153004; Laurie A. Rudman, “Self-Promotion as a Risk Factor for Women: The Costs and Benefits of Counterstereotypical Impression Management,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 3 (1998): 629—645, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9523410; Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, “Disruptions in Women’s Self-Promotion: The Backlash Avoidance Model,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2010): 186—202, doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2010.01561.x.
6. What’s the difference between bragging and positive disclosure? For a linguistic/rhetorical exploration of self-praise on Twitter, see Daria Dayter, “Self-Praise in Microblogging,” Journal of Pragmatics 61 (January 2014): 91—102, doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.021.
7. Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral?,” Journal of Marketing Research 49, no. 2 (2012): 192—205, http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jmr.10.0353.
8. Robinson Meyer, “Why Are Upworthy Headlines Suddenly Everywhere?,” Atlantic, December 8, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/why-are-upworthy-headlines-suddenly-everywhere/282048; Michael Reid Roberts, “Life Sentences: The Grammar of Clickbait,” American Reader, http://theamericanreader.com/life-sentences-the-grammar-of-clickbait; Belle Beth Cooper, “A Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails, and Blog Posts at the Best Time,” BufferSocial (blog), Buffer, August 29, 2013, https://blog.bufferapp.com/best-time-to-tweet-post-to-facebook-send-emails-publish-blogposts.
9. Christopher Mims, “Why You’ll Share This Story: The New Science of Memes,” Quartz, June 28, 2013, http://qz.com/98677/why-youll-share-this-story-the-new-science-of-memes.
10. Alexia Tsotsis, “Google+ Is Walking Dead,” TechCrunch, April 24, 2014, http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead; Adrienne La France, Adrienne Meyer, and Robinson Meyer, “A Eulogy for Twitter,” Atlantic, April 30, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulogy-for-twitter/361339.
11. Kyle Vanhermert, “The Design Thinking behind Twitter’s Revamped Profiles,” Wired, April 9, 2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/04/the-design-process-behind-twitters-revamped-profiles; Dante D’Orazio, “YouTube Changes Search to Rank Based on How Long Users Watch Videos, Not Clicks,” The Verge, October 12, 2012, http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/12/3494826/youtube-changes-search-to-rank-based-on-how-long-users-watch-videos; Kurt Wagner, “Facebook’s News Feed: What Changed and Why,” Mashable, April 16, 2014, http://mashable.com/2014/04/16/news-feed-changes.
12. Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” Shirky (blog), March 13, 2009, http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable.
13. Maureen Morrison and Abbey Klaassen, “Dan Wieden’s Advice for Small Agencies: Learn to Fail,” Advertising Age, July 25, 2013, http://adage.com/article/agency-news/dan-wieden-s-advice-small-agencies-learn-fail/243329.
14. Google Analytics, accessed February 14, 2015, http://www.google.com/analytics.
15. Jacob Smith, “Show Me Your Nonprofit Dashboard!,” Beth’s Blog, April 21, 2011, http://www.bethkanter.org/nonprofit-dashboard.
16. Shauna M. VanBogart, “Establishing Credibility Online through Impression Management,” master’s thesis, Gonzaga University, 2013, 47, http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1501649062.html?FMT=AI.
17. Jacquelyn Gill, post on Twitter, February 6, 2014, https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/431453808674091008.
18. Nitsuh Abebe, “Watching Team Upworthy Work Is Enough to Make You a Cynic. Or Lose Your Cynicism. Both. Or Neither,” New York Magazine, March 23, 2014, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/upworthy-team-explains-its-success.html.
19. Jeffery Pfeffer, Christina T. Fong, and Robert B. Cialdini, “Overcoming the Self-Promotion Dilemma: Interpersonal Attraction and Extra Help as a Consequence of Who Sings One’s Praises,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32, no. 10 (November 2006): 362—374, http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/overcoming-self-promotion-dilemma-interpersonal-attraction-extra-help.
20. Dan Zarrella, “New Data Proves ’Please ReTweet’ Generates 4x More ReTweets [Data],” HubSpot (blog), May 31, 2011, http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14982/New-Data-Proves-Please-ReTweet-Generates-4x-More-ReTweets-Data.aspx.
21. Hauke Riesch and Jonathan Mendel, “Science Blogging: Networks, Boundaries and Limitations,” Science as Culture 23, no. 1 (2014): 51—72, doi:10.1080/09505431.2013.801420.
22. Liz Neeley, “’So Tweet This, Maybe?’—Promoting Your Work in Social Media,” COMPASS Blogs, February 25, 2013, http://compassblogs.org/blog/2013/02/25/so-tweet-this-maybe.
23. Liz Neeley, post on Twitter, January 22, 2014, https://twitter.com/LizNeeley/status/426232442089766912.