Pitch Science

Are you a scientist who wants to become more active here on LinkedIn? LinkedIn is an often slept on social media platform 😴 Yes, it can be more of an echo chamber with other likeminded scientists so you’re less likely to be communicating your work to the public... BUT LinkedIn is designed for users to establish thought leadership within their fields, enhance their employability and build strong personal brands 💡 So if your core goal is to boost your career and build a strong professional network – it's perfect! The question remains though, what should you be posting? To give you a head start, I've curated this short list of 8 LinkedIn post ideas specifically for scientists: 📰 Share interesting science news relevant to your research topic 📖 Write a book review about a science book you've read recently 🤓 Provide a non-academic summary of your latest research paper 🤝 Talk about your volunteering and public outreach experiences and initiatives 🔬 Share relevant tips and skills you've learned during your research journey 🏅 Celebrate any recent career milestones you've achieved ✈️ Discuss your insights from a conference you've recently attended 💡 Give insight into how you approach leadership within your lab or even your field You could 100% use these ideas for content intended for other online platforms, but their career-centric nature makes them the perfect place to start when curating LinkedIn post ideas! If you've got any other LinkedIn post ideas, make sure to drop them in the comments below and follow Pitch for more tailor-made tips and tricks designed exclusively for scientists like you 👩🔬👨🔬 #ScienceCommunication #Researcher #Scientist #PhDStudent #SciComm #ScientificResearch

Repeat after me: impact does not equal citations 🔬❌📑 A 2024 study looked at whether tweeting about a paper can boost it’s citations 3 years later & spoiler alert: it didn’t 😅 The researchers tweeted about random papers from a journal of their choosing over the course of 10 months. All tweeting researchers had at least 5,000 followers each, so they certainly weren’t tweeting into a follower-less abyss. When they compared their 110 tweeted papers to 440 control papers, they did not find statistically significant evidence that their tweets had boosted citations 3 years later. (Though they did acknowledge the study did not have enough statistical power to detect a significant difference 👀) Honestly, I don’t think this result even matters... Because their tweeted papers DID have significantly higher Altmetric scores at both 30 days after tweeting & 3 years later. In fact, the tweeted papers had an 81% increase in Altmetric scores over the control papers at the 3 year time point! 🤯 Plus, the daily download rate for tweeted papers was almost four times higher on the day of the tweets. So people were indeed reading & talking about these papers far more than controls! Yet Nature News described this result as the ‘nail in the coffin’ for sharing science on Twitter. Did we read the same paper?! Don’t get me wrong, Twitter/X isn’t the best platform now for *other* reasons – but not because of anything scicomm related 😂 It really comes down to why we share science online in the first place. Because science communication is not solely about sharing your work to people who could cite it in the future! It’s about sharing your science with people outside of your niche. We should be celebrating increased Altmetric scores for the achievement that it is – real knowledge sharing & effectively making science more accessible to all I also wrote about this in more detail on the Pitch blog 👇

Does your science brand need it's own custom branded hashtag on social media? Short answer: majority of the time, probably not 😅 A branded hashtag, aka #BrandName, #BrandTagline or #BrandedCampaign, can be a useful tool for giant companies, like Coca-Cola and Nike. That's because these large corporations have a correspondingly large audience that can be incentivised to use the hashtag in their own content to raise brand awareness. But the chances are that your brand tagline is less recognisable than #JustDoIt (no offence) and you're less likely to get consistent user-generated content or UGC (again, no offence). For a smaller-scale brand, there's far better alternatives: ＠ Ask people to directly tag you instead (the best case scenario) 📌 Set up a brand location that people can also geo-tag Both of these options are clickable and will be a more direct route to your socials pages – the less clicks it takes people to get to your account, the more likely they are to actually make it there! As with much of life, there's no truly hard and fast rules. So, there are a couple of scenarios where a branded hashtag may indeed be needed or useful: 📅 When you're hosting a specific conference and event 🎁 For tracking specific giveaways or prize draws 📱 A specific content series that's highly likely to get UGC too Notice that all three are reliant on some form of UGC and need hashtags that are specific to that unique use case? Because if it's just you adding #BrandName onto the end of all your content, without any UGC or campaign to support it, then it's really only acting as visual clutter that's not giving any tangible benefit back. Oh and two more bits of bonus advice: 1. You can tell if it's redundant if you're 99% of the posts under your branded hashtag. 2. If your branded hashtag is currently your entire hashtag strategy – please rethink your hashtag strategy because I promise you that it is not effective right now! 🙏

I’ve seen a new podcasting trend emerge recently from science organisations & I’m a little baffled in all honestly 😅 I can see the value of podcasts and do understand why other people enjoy creating & listening to them. Podcasts can be a great way to share in-depth information with an audience who is dedicated & passionate. However, the dissemination approach being taken by many these scientific podcasts isn't effective given the nature & competitiveness of the podcasting space. In this blog post, I talk about how these institutional podcasts can be taken even further through – what I feel are – no-brainer changes that will truly maximise impact 🙌 Read the post here: https://lnkd.in/eZgCBkYQ #ResearchInstitutes #ScienceCommunication #Research #Podcasting #SciencePodcast

There's currently 2 new client spots currently open to work with me at Pitch Science! I’m currently in the process of finishing up some science branding & website design projects... So there’s room for those larger one-off projects coming up in my calendar + some extra capacity to take on new content creation clients too 🥳 So, if you've been thinking about stepping up your scicomm game, here's how I can help: 💬 Science content creation – we're talking socials, blogs, emails + other content that shares your science with online audiences 👩🔬 Personal branding & academic website design for scientists & research groups – I can get you online, live & ready for the start of 2025 💻 Branding & website design for science brands – these packages are designed to capture your science story perfectly 💪 1:1 content coaching to strengthen your science brand's online presence – perfect for brands who aren't ready to outsource or employ help for their science content 👩🏫 Speaking & training that empowers your researchers to extend their impact – they're the true experts, so let's help them share their science together Whether you're an individual scientist, research institute, not-for-profit or another science-based organisation, I'm here to help you turn your science into compelling stories. Want to learn more? Head to the Pitch website & submit an enquiry form: https://lnkd.in/g-skNAGa Remember, good things – and client spots – don't last forever. So snap them up while they're still available! 👀🏃♀️💨

Not doing science communication is costing science not-for-profits philanthropic donations 💸 I see so many NFPs structure their marketing strategy solely around their researchers (eg. awards won or theses submitted) and celebrating special days (eg. *insert topic* awareness day or Happy Easter). But this means that potential donors need to have HUGE amounts of trust in you to then commit to giving a donation, especially in this economic climate... Because do they know what research that money is specifically funding? Nope! 🙅♀️ Imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and simply being met with a wall of awards and trophies – no product or even product details in sight. Though it's impressive and maybe instils some confidence, it doesn't tell you much about the offers or products they actually sell. Would you purchase the product in that scenario, without any additional information? In the same way, NFPs and research organisations who neglect to communicate their work are ignoring the needs and wants of their audience in favour of more surface-level self-promotion 👀 Even if there is some science communication content buried deep within the website, if it's not also on those easy growth marketing channels like socials, that's still a massive missed opportunity. This isn't to say researcher achievements and special days don't have a place in the strategy – they definitely do. Rather, the strategy is simply missing a key component that will help drive loyalty, engagement, and ultimately philanthropic donations. Because if people know what you do, they're far more likely to want to support it! ✨

Last week, I went back to my old high school and spoke to the year 11 girls all about my STEM career so far I do this event at St Mary's Anglican Girls' School every year – I think this was my 6th or 7th time? I’m losing count! And as per usual, I got asked SO MANY questions by the students, both about my old life as a neuroscience researcher and my new one as a full-time self-employed science communicator 🙋♀️💬 One of the students this year asked me what I find most fulfilling or rewarding about doing science communication and the way I answered this question genuinely took me by surprise After pondering on it for a moment, I found myself saying to her that the most rewarding thing is when I see the comments and feedback my clients receive on my work Like yes, I obviously love getting great first-hand feedback from the people I work with 😅 But seeing their own audiences be excited to learn something new about themselves or the world around them, and reading those comments as they come in, is just infinitely more rewarding This is one of the things I love about doing these kinds of in-person outreach events Because not only do I get to spend my time encouraging other people to become more engaged and passionate about science (and I do love to see the girls’ faces light up as we talk)... But I also feel like I always get to learn something new about myself in the process too 🥰 Bonus: I got to have a photo of me nerding out to them about rat brains 🧠👩🔬

How research institutes and science organisations approach science communication is a gendered issue... This is a huge problem within STEM and yet I never see anyone talking about it! So let's have a chat 💬 We know that there is progressive gender filtering within academia, with fewer and fewer women at the more advanced academic career stages. This leaky pipeline is the result of a wide range of gender biases, different forms of harassment, and overall sexism. But one lesser known (and more easily solved) contributor is the disproportionate burden of ‘care work’ on female researchers 👩🔬 What do I mean by care work? Mentoring, teaching, committee work, and – central to this discussion – public outreach and science communication. Numerous studies have shown that women in particular are expected to undertake more care work for science organisations. They're more likely to be asked to do care work, more likely to say yes to it when asked, and are more likely to undertake it of their own accord 🙋♀️ Despite outreach and science communication directly benefiting science organisations, it is typically weighted far lower when academics apply for promotion compared to traditional research metrics like publications. Yet those who are busy with care work have less time to focus on the research that boosts these metrics. As a consequence, the women who are doing more public outreach and science communication on behalf of their institute or organisation are under-recognised and under-valued. This isn't to say that some – or even most – women don't enjoy doing this care work. As a science communicator, I will obviously never argue that outreach isn't fun! 😅 BUT it is still a huge gender imbalance that is rarely addressed by research institutes and science organisations. So what are some solutions? ⚖️ Improve the metrics by which we judge performance for academic promotions and have a more balanced inclusion of care work tasks within the criteria. 👀 Simply stop asking disproportionately women to perform care work and ask more male researchers to get involved. 🤝 Actively do more outreach and science communication at an organisational level to ease the load on individual academics (I'm looking at you, PR and marketing teams). 💰 Give tangible incentives and benefits to those who do undertake care work – because ultimately, it should be rewarded, not penalised. This is all just one part of the much larger leaky pipeline of academia... but it is such an easy component to *get right* What do you think? Is there another way to solve this issue? Is it something you've not considered before? I'm curious to hear your thoughts in the comments 👇

Pitch Science hit some milestones overnight! 🥳 A big thank you for: 💻 Over 200k website visits since the site launched 8th January 2023 🛍️ Over 1000 shop orders since the shop launched 28th June 2023 The digital products people have loved the most have been: 🧬 PhD Essentials Notion Template 🔬 Ultimate PhD Notion Template 🧪 Researcher Organisation Notion Template 🩺 Disability & Chronic Illness Tracker Notion Template ↳ This one makes me especially happy as l'm passionate about supporting disabled & chronically ill scientists (especially ECRs) & the most popular Pitch Profile so far has been from neuroscientist Elzbieta Dulko → read here: https://lnkd.in/gjSNyqUa I appreciate all the support & I look forward to continuing to provide these resources + opportunities to #scientists & #researchers at all career stages!

I am PASSIONATE about helping scientists 🫵 Because I've been there and done that – I understand first hand how hard it is to juggle everything in research-land. So here are 6 ways I help individual scientists: 🎙️ Pitch Profiles series My Pitch Profiles series is all about celebrating diversity within the science community and giving researchers a chance to communicate with a wider audience. I get THOUSANDS of people from around the world looking at Pitch each month... So far in 2024, I've had over 70,000 people visit the website alone! So I’m using this growing platform for good by handing the microphone over to others (if you want to submit an interview, I'm always looking for new feature scientists). 📖 Resource library I’m continually building a resource library to help scientists stay organised and further develop their skills – from Notion templates, a Gantt chart template, to other downloadable resources. 🛠️ Sharing online tools I share lots of online tools that are useful for scientists and science communicators. I often share these here on socials and I also have a dedicated webpage with the links to all of my favourite tools. 💻 Educational blogs I want Pitch to become a go-to for scicomm know-how so I've recently been putting a lot of energy into writing out educational science communication blog posts. As I build up the blog library, I'm then sending the best additions straight to people's inboxes through the Pitch Lab email newsletter. 📱 Tips and tricks on socials I try to give out lots of free tips and tricks here on social media. When I pop up on your feeds, I want you to feel like you're getting real, tangible value back from my content. So let me know if there’s any content you want to see from me that’d help you on your science communication journey! 🎨 Branding packages For those who want to take it even further, I have researcher branding packages. I designed these to meet the unique needs of scientists, to communicate their expertise and engage with a wider audience. I was on a call recently and when they heard the price of my researcher packages, they audibly gasped at how low they're priced 😅 But I understand that these kinds of services are often inaccessible to individuals and I want to change that as much as I can – I even offer an extra student discount too. Whether you engage with one or all of these – I do sincerely hope my work at Pitch is helping you 😘