Using Social Media to Promote your Research: MSKTC Suite of Tools and Information

MSKTC produced a webinar titled Using Social Media to Promote Your Research; a recording of the webinar is available here: http://www.msktc.org/Model-Systems-Grantees/webinars. This webinar was designed to help the attendees understand the pervasiveness of social media; understand who uses social media; learn about the uses for different social media platforms; think about what they can do with social media; learn about the steps needed to manage social media; and see how a few Model Systems are effectively using their own social media. As a follow up to this webinar, researchers can develop a social media strategic plan using the following three tools developed by the MSKTC:

• Guide for Developing an MSKTC Social Media Plan: This document is a go-to reference for researchers to navigate different social media platforms and to plan, execute, monitor and optimize their social media efforts;
• MSKTC Social Media Development Workbook: This workbook accompanies the Guide to help researchers work through all aspects of a social media plan to communicate about their research;
• MSKTC Social Media Development Content Calendar: This Excel sheet helps researchers map out their use of social media by adapting it to the frequency with which they plan to use social media.

The tools can be found here: http://www.msktc.org/Knowledge-Translation/Social-Media-Guide.

In addition to the webinar and tools developed by MSKTC, a web clinic on social media analytics was held to review the types of analytics available for three platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Participants discussed how to use that data to inform and improve research dissemination and outreach through social media. The web clinic introduced best practices in using analytics, measuring engagement through analytics, creating data reports, and knowing what questions to ask of the researcher’s organization if they do not manage their own social media platforms. A recording of the web clinic is available here: http://www.msktc.org/Model-Systems-Grantees/webinars.