When I was working as a scientist, I realised that there was great disparity between the information you could find in peer reviewed journals, compared to the information you can find in public.

But the thing is, scientists like you and me are just like anybody else. We still use google and social media, except the information we want is lacking or just not as readily available. And that’s simply because scientists are just not as good at marketing themselves.

In this post, I’m going to discuss some ideas so that you can start networking as a scientist, share your existing scientific knowledge and even build yourself an invaluable reputation outside of your day-to-day colleagues. And this is true not only for chemistry, but for all science in general.

Science Communication Using Social Media

Let’s start with an easy one.

The likelihood is that you are already active on the major social media platforms; but just how much do you use it for your profession?

Once you know where to look, finding subjects and topics that other scientists have in common is fairly simple. All you need to do is get asking and answering questions or getting involved with the online discussion.

Twitter has a great search engine that lets you look for keywords or hashtags.

Knowing that #scicomm (short for ‘science communication’) is a relevant hashtag to start investigating, using a simple tool called hashtagify.me, I can look for similar keywords to get involved with, this gave me the following:

You can even find other scientists or other accounts that tweet solely on similar subjects, something that is more relevant to your field or interest.

Linkedin is a more ‘professional’ social media account to use. But apart from making connections with people you already know or wish to reach out to, there are endless groups that discuss topics of choice.

Reddit may not be the first social media channel that comes to mind, but there are massive communities there ready to get involved with the discussion.

r/chemistry has almost 1 million followers, r/physics has 1.1 million followers and r/biology has a massive 1.7 million followers.

That’s not even scratching the surface of the niche science subreddits; go over and find a conversation to get involved with!

Get Involved With The Public

With the ongoing interest in STEM subjects – especially amongst girls – getting involved with public engagement opportunities is easier than you might realise.