Updates on the use of NEUROPUBLIC's social media

One of the first tasks I was assigned to when I joined NEUROPUBLIC back in 2016 was to take over its social media accounts; back then, the company had two almost inactive accounts on Facebook and LinkedIn, respectively. 

I came from Agroknow, where I was responsible (among others) for its social media on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram - and it was commonly admitted that I did a pretty good job. Frequent updates, interesting news, good use of handles and hashtags and attractive visuals was a part of the magic.

So I had the experience, know-how and all the good will to replicate my approach in the case of NEUROPUBLIC. The context was slightly different (information systems and smart farming in this case) and the responsibility was higher (being responsible for the social media presence of a company of 100+ employees) but I rolled up my sleeves and started working on it.

Rolling up my sleeves

The first thing I did was to define the areas of interest. Then to find out who the major players were and what reliable sources of relevant content I could use. I started following collaborators, projects and other stakeholders of NEUROPUBLIC, with a segment of them following us back.

I am especially proud of NEUROPUBLIC's Twitter account. Twitter is the platform I love the most, because of its really fast feed, option to add visuals to an otherwise boring text and the substantial use of hashtags. Plus, I love the strict character limitation of each tweet, which makes everyone think twice before posting a long text.

Have I mentioned that I am especially proud of @NEUROPUBLIC 's Twitter account, which I set up from scratch some years ago? ✨

Thank you @tweepsmap for the useful stats! 🙏#NEUROPUBLIC #Twitter #SocialMedia #OrganicGrowth #Tweepsmap pic.twitter.com/DrGeSb5xGZ

— V. Protonotarios (@vprot) October 22, 2021

Right now, NEUROPUBLIC's Twitter account has more than 1,200 real followers, all of them organic (i.e. we used no budget for paid posts, Twitter campaigns etc. yet). At the same time, the company's LinkedIn page has reached 2,800 followers, making it our most popular social media channel. We used LinkedIn for posting paid job postings, and we noticed a slight increase in the number of followers after each posting.

In both channels, the majority of the content is published in English.

Using Facebook for business purposes  & the competitive advantage of LinkedIn and Twitter

On the other hand, NEUROPUBLIC's Facebook page has about 1,600 followers. And we had some paid campaigns running in the past, which increased our reach and brought in some new followers. One might expect more from the more popular social media platform - I didn't. 

First, our Facebook content is exclusively available in Greek. No matter what the status of the company is in Greece, the audience is much smaller compared to the global one. The vast majority of our projects are EU-funded ones, our larger networks are global and NEUROPUBLIC's gaiasense smart farming system gets a lot of attention from international bodies. Automatic translation of posts has been available for quite a long time now, but it is not the same.

Second, our main audience does not use Facebook for professional purposes. I knew it before - LinkedIn and Twitter are much more appropriate for such purposes. If you asked me, I would say that most companies use Twitter and LinkedIn (in this order) for interacting for professional purposes, while for professionals / individuals LinkedIn is #1. 

And you know why? Because a company cannot interact using a LinkedIn company page! You can surely post things but you cannot like a specific post as a company unless (a) it comes in your feed through a notification based on the just three hashtags you define in the page, or (b) the post explicitly mentions your company page using a tag.

 

As a result, if you want to be active on social media, respond, like other posts etc., then Twitter is your valuable tool. And this is what I am doing with NEUROPUBLIC's accounts.

On the other hand, as an individual you can use Twitter and LinkedIn for interacting with posts of others with no problem. And this is what I am doing with my personal accounts.

Take home messages

We post almost equally on all three channels, with small revisions in some cases. Thanks to the faster pace of Twitter, I am able to post more frequently there and this is really important in the case of our EU (and Greek) projects that I need to communicate every now and then. 

On the other hand, we keep a slower pace on Facebook and LinkedIn, in order to provide our followers with more time to go through each post before going to the next one. This is not a problem, as we usually need some time to curate new posts (longer ones compared to the short tweets!) and make them as effective as possible.

In all cases, we do not pay much attention to the analytics and metrics of each channel. We still enjoy a degree of freedom in this sense, so we post things we like, when we like (or have the time to do so). We are not "selling" stuff through our social media - we just raise awareness about the company and its work, so we are not stressed (yet) about KPIs. And this is what I love the most.

So if I were to summarize, I would suggest a K.I.S.S. approach (Keep It Stupid Simple), putting the focus on quality content and not on KPIs. In this way, we manage to establish a constantly growing community of followers on social media while at the same time having fun.

Participation in the BEYOND 4.0 International Expo

I was excited to be part of the team to represent NEUROPUBLIC at the Beyond 4.0 International Expo. The event took place between 14-16 of October 2021 at Thessaloniki, Greece. The team was great, consisting of people from our Marketing, Sales, Software Development and Technical departments, covering all different dimensions of the company's services.

Compared to the Thessaloniki International Fair, in which I also participated one month earlier, the visitors seems to be more focused / targeted and close to the theme of BEYOND (while in TIF visitors were mostly a generic audience - probable due to the generic character of the Fair). 

The schedule was packed as BEYOND was open to the public between 10.00-20.00, leaving us only a limited time for sightseeing and other activities. On top of that, the weather during BEYOND was awful (ranging from light rain to heavy thunderstorms), so it was a good things that all Stands were indoors. The bad weather was probably the main factor that prevented potential visitors from visiting the Expo, but still there was quite a crowd on Friday and Saturday - and this indicates the importance of the event.

View of the cloudy and rainy area outside the BEYOND 4.0 Expo

The exhibitors fell under two main categories: Innovative (and some not so innovative) companies working on digital solutions mostly for the public sector (Regions, Local Governments etc.) and the Public Sector itself (ranging from Municipalities to Regions), showcasing the digital transformation steps that they have implemented so far.

We (as NEUROPUBLIC) had the opportunity to present our digital services for the public sector, both through a dedicated presentation at the central stage of the Pavilion and through direct communication with potential stakeholders who approached our Stand. At the same time, we had the opportunity to see the offerings of the competition and see how we compare with them.

Our Stand was impressive: large, bright and conveniently located at the center of the Pavilion, right next to the central stage. It was full of useful material, like leaflets and other printed material, videos playing on three different large monitors and many of my colleagues available to discuss with visitors of our Stand. Plus, two lovely promoters were always available to hand out informational material to the visitors.

I don't know if it was due to my academic background. but most of the discussions I had during the Expo was with Professors, Researchers and students from various Universities. I enjoyed learning about their projects and outcomes, their work and collaborations, no matter if they came from the Earth Observation, IoT or any other domain. I also had the opportunity to visit their Stands and see their work.

Big thanks to my colleagues from our Northern Greece office, who helped a lot with lots of things, from our transportation to the smooth operation of our Stand!

InnoWise Scale Competition - Lessons learnt

Just before summer, NEUROPUBLIC was invited to participate as one of the solution providers for the agriculture Use Case of the InnoWise Scale Competition on Water Scarcity (you can find a nice description of the competition on the REVOLVE website - the Communication partner of the Competition and did a really nice job!).

It was an international event that aimed to attract innovative companies to help SanLucar, a fruit and vegetables company based in Spain, address the water scarcity and salinity issues it faces in its apricot orchards at the area of Murcia, Spain.

Participation in the InnoWise Scale Competition

I was assigned this task and so I started working on it during the summer. There were several online meetings during this period:

• Between the organizers of the event (EIT-Food), the problem holder (SanLucar) and the solution providers (mostly companies offering various types of smart and digital farming services), explaining various aspects of the process and defining the key issues faced by SanLucar, 
• 1-1 meetings of each company with SanLucar to discuss the details of a potential collaboration, 
• Training sessions on better designing and delivering the pitch for the final day
• Numerous sessions of each company with its mentor; we were lucky enough to have Andrea Cruciani from Agricolus with us who shared ideas, insights and tips for improving our pitch.

In the meantime, I started working on the slides (visual) and my speech (audio), as the pitch would be pre-recorded using Loom allowing the concurrent recording of webcam and desktop (the slides) video feed. I had to present the context, our gaiasense smart farming system and our envisaged solution in just 4 minutes - and this seemed way too short to me.

The slides were eventually transformed and the pitch became more focused and lean (with slides and text being left out in the final version) with valuable contributions from both our mentor and our Water Resources Management expert, Dimitris.

The Judgement Day

The big day came and all solution providers completed their pitches, allowing the jury to decide on the most suitable solutions for the specific issue, with the help of SanLucar's representative for selecting the most appropriate one for the big prize and the demo of the solution in the orchards of SanLucar.

The competition was really hard and unfortunately and despite our efforts, our proposal was not among the ones awarded. But was the result that bad? 

Well, I was hoping for the big prize, that would allow us to set up another gaiasense installation in Spain (following up on the ones taking place in the context of the LIFE GAIA Sense project) and set up a potential commercial collaboration with SanLucar, a large international company, with significant perspectives.

Even the 2nd and 3rd prize would bring some (even small) financial benefit to gaiasense, financing parts of its development - technological or scientific. But what would matter most to me, due to my personal involvement and investment in both time and effort, would be the acknowledgement that what I was working on made a difference and was even slightly better compared to the competition.

Conclusions

To be honest, I hoped (and believed) that our proposal would make it in the Top-3. But for various reasons, this didn't happen.

In the end, our participation in the InnoWise Scale competition was yet another valuable lesson. What did we get from it? More than one could think:

Valuable experience from our participation in a different kind of international competition;

The selection / acknowledgement of NEUROPUBLIC by the organizers as one valuable solution provider, featured in various social media posts;

The presentation of gaiasense to a different audience abroad;

The excellent communication we had with Andrea Cruciani, our mentor and CEO of Agricolus, who is working in a similar field as our gaiasense smart farming system;

The identification of important competitors activated in Mediterranean countries.

Last but not least, we established connections with the EIT-Food team, especially with Carmen and Evgenia - which I hope that will may be useful in the near future.

So I am keeping all these as precious outcomes of our participation in the InnoWise Scale competition and will try to make the best use of them in the future.