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.

Using social media for increasing awareness at corporate level

Background 

Let’s get things straight from the start: As (at least some of) you know, I am an agronomist (holding a PhD from the Agricultural University of Athens / Dept. of Agricultural Biotechnology), and I have a relatively long experience in the field of agricultural information & knowledge management as well as in the participation of various EU projects (ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to ICT-PSP, FP7 & Horizon 2020), always in the agrifood sector. Through my participation in these projects, I had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of different activities, such as the design and delivery of training courses for agricultural trainers, organization of information and knowledge (e.g. courses, publications and other material) in digital repositories, description of digital resources with metadata and classification with Knowledge Organization Systems), interoperability between different content management systems and digital repositories, metadata management workflows and many-many more. Through this experience I managed to have a different view of agriculture, the one of research outcomes/publications and how these can (and should, in some cases) be freely and openly accessible to anyone interested (this is what Open Access is about) – the same applied to research data (open data). In this context, I recently had the opportunity to combine my background in agriculture/agronomy and my experience in information and knowledge management with social media (which I personally consider extremely useful tools for professional purposes as well). I spent quite some time as the Marketing & Networks Manager of Agroknow, where I had the opportunity to set up existing digital marketing channels and grow the existing ones.

regram @small_ant86 Vassilis is presenting "how to write my first #blog" @agroknow @vprot

A photo posted by Vassilis (@vprot) on Sep 29, 2014 at 5:14am PDT

When I started working for NEUROPUBLIC, a company of a larger scale and different structure compared to the ones that I have worked for in the past, I faced a big challenge: How could I apply my experience in a different (but still not unknown) context, the one of smart farming (or precision farming) and related ones like remote sensing, earth observation, Internet of Things in agriculture etc.? While the means would remain the same, it was obvious that I would need to adapt the approach and the analysis of the specific ecosystem – referring not only to individual stakeholders but also to organizations that are activated in the same field as NEUROPUBLIC. In any case, the main point is to find the best possible way to expose to external stakeholders all this interesting work that takes place in NEUROPUBLIC (but was not communicated at all, during the last years). This was exactly the pain of NEUROPUBLIC and this would be one of my roles in the company.

Activities

The first step in the process was the analysis of the current status of the social media accounts of NEUROPUBLIC (referring to its corporate pages on Facebook and LinkedIn). Then, I took some time to set up a corporate Twitter account, which I consider a necessary communication and outreach mean for a company like NEUROPUBLIC. The last in line was the setup of the corporate blog, which I hope that it will provide an alternative mean of expression and outreach for the company staff. It only became the last in the list due to the fact that it takes a lot of design and planning and we wanted to get things started immediately - at this time, the blog has been set up but we are internally testing content management workflows and roles so it's not public - yet.

At the same time, I had to find the sources from which I could mine content related to the company that I could then promote through the aforementioned social media channels – the corporate website was a great start as it already contained a wealth of information about the company and its work along with great visual content. On top of that, I did some research regarding quality sources of news related to the thematic areas that NEUROPUBLIC is activated in; in this way, we would not only share our corporate news but we would also draw the attention of those activated in the same context.

Before I were in the position to promote NEUROPUBLIC’s work to external stakeholders, I had to achieve a deep understanding of them: this translates to countless hours of studying related documents, slides and other types of publications for better understanding concepts like precision agriculture, remote sensing, earth observation, NDVI, IACS, LPIS, even CAP etc. and see how they are integrated in the Smart Farming outcomes of NEUROPUBLIC, such as the GAIA Sense network of the GAIATron telemetric stations, GAIA Agronomy, GAIA Irrigation, GAIA Shield etc.

Last but not least, I keep studying the networks in which NEUROPUBLIC is a member of, such as the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, the Big Data Value Association, the Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation and the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) and follow their activities, trying to establish and maintain contact, as well as to provide feedback when needed. I also check out further networking opportunities - social media are extremely useful in this case, too.

Next steps

The next steps are more or less typical for this type of work: (i) Keep social media frequently updated, (ii) establish connections and (iii) make the most out of them - opportunities exist even in social media. :-)

I have 26 new followers from UK., USA, and more last week. See https://t.co/SVXfnVNr4D pic.twitter.com/ZB4kUJtQGO

— NEUROPUBLIC (@Neuropublic) August 5, 2016

The progress can be evaluated (partially, from my point of view) through the analytics tools provided by each channel. I believe that there is no need for complex reports and focusing on these metrics (vanity metrics as many call them). An increasing number of followers, likes and shares is an indication that what you are doing is good and draws the attention of people but since the company does not sell its products through social media there’s no point in focusing on them. Instead, my approach is that social media in cases like NEUROPUBLIC should be used for keeping people informed about the activities of the company and show a constant activity on social media. My experience says that the rest will follow.