This document summarizes Farida Vis's use of social media to engage audiences for an academic conference on visual social media. It describes her strategy for promoting the conference months in advance on multiple social media platforms and tracking engagement. It also outlines her plan for sharing and curating content from the conference online in the following weeks to maximize engagement and create an archive.

1. Social Media engagement and impact
CASE STUDY:
#VISSOCMEDCONF
FARIDA VIS | @flygirltwo

2. Using social media engagement for an
event
#VisSocMedConf (500+ tweets on the day)

3. Social media
in academia

4. 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

5. 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%)

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

7. Twitter: joined early 2010 (12k+ tweets)
Tweet about ‘everything’
Only one public account
No separate work Twitter
Flygirl2/two since 1997

8. SlideShare: joined early 2011 (28 uploads)

9. • 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)

10. 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

11. 750 MILLION -
1.8 BILLION
IMAGES
SHARED
DAILY

12. 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

13. Diverse, all stages of career + cross sector!

14. 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!!!

15. In June: press release (general info)

16. In June: proposal online (specific info)

17. In June: Twitter account (building a network)

18. 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

19. Launch of Lab at US industry conference

20. 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

21. 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

22. Press release: when was it shared?

23. Where was it shared? Mainly ‘unknown’

24. RA post: peaks in July and August

25. Mainly shared on Twitter: good to know?

26. Turning attention to the conference

27. 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

28. 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

29. Creating ‘buzz’ through regular updates

30. Another press release (piggy backing)

31. 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

32. 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!

33. 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! *

34. 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

35. #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 list
and 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!

36.  

38. #VisSocMedConf

39. Lead by
example!

42. Tracking your impact: collect data immediately!

43. If searched now, 2.5 weeks later: data gone!

44. 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!

45. Twitonomy: different types of reports available

46. 

47. 
How to define engagement? Same as the tool?
Activity a useful starting point, but more possible.

48. 

49. Did your hashtag ‘work’? Was it accepted?

52. Twitonomy: access to all the 522 tweets

53. Also access to some metadata (incl. URL!)

54. 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?

55. 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!

56. Post event engagement:
Audio up on SoundCloud within 7 days

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

58. Try to document/recapture experience

59. Networking in action

60. Engaged audience

61. Engagement and visibility ‘at home’

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

63. Putting archived content together in Storify
For a long-term online record of the event

64. Lots of options for searching content

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

66. Why only 4 results? How can that be?

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

68. Data tool or via individual still visible tweets

69. So why can’t I see this in Storify?

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

71. 

72. Don’t search under Twitter! No results!

73. Enter the URL as an ‘Embed URL’

74. You can do the same with the pinned image

75. Put tweet and image together in your draft

76. Do the same with event feedback!

77. This is stuff you don’t want to lose!

78. Valuable additional data around your event

79. 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?

80. 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?

81. 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

82. 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

83. *** 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

84. visualsocialmedialab.org
@VisSocMedLab
f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk
@flygirltwo

85. #GetEngaged
#Shefsocmed!