26. Social Media Strategy: Dr Julius Wesche on how to build your online presence (and boost impact while doing it)

Stakeholder/audience mappingCrafting hooksStrategic commsStrategy
Written By Chris Pahlow

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Episode show notes

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Not sure where to start with social media? Dr. Julius Wesche gives us a masterclass on how to build a powerful online presence and boost your research impact while doing it.

Julius is a researcher based at the Norwegian university of science and technology, who's an expert in science communication — especially when it comes to leveraging social media and podcasts for research comms.

He regularly shares amazing tips for researchers on his LinkedIn profile, and he's the host of three great podcasts: the science communication accelerator podcast, the NTNU’s energy transition podcast, and the enPower podcast (which has more than 800,000 listens).

“Attention is the prerequisite for impact. And if you want to have impact, you have to make your stuff available. And I think social media right now is the cheapest way of doing that.“ – Julius Wesche

This episode is a must-listen for any researcher looking to expand their reach online. From tailoring content for different platforms to analysing key metrics that matter, Julius offers practical advice you can start implementing today.

Our conversation covers:

  • Why having an online presence is essential for researchers today

  • How to get started with social media as a researcher, even if you're a beginner

  • Building your social media strategy incrementally (and keeping it alive)

  • How to define and prioritise the key audience for your research communication efforts.

  • Tailoring content to different platforms: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and beyond

  • Practical tips for making sure your social media strategy is practical and sustainable

  • Coming up with great hooks for your posts/content

  • Tracking metrics

  • Common mistakes researchers make on social media (and how to avoid them)

Practical tips from this episode:

  • Start small and grow gradually:

    • “Start small, start simple, make it achievable. Do that self-reflection thinking about what you like, what you don't like, how much time you can give sustainably in a week because this is a long game and consistency is key.” – Julius Wesche

  • Define your key audience “with teeth”:

    • “It’s always good to have your target group defined with teeth because then you will be able to make content that caters specifically to what they are doing or trying to learn. Because if you try to cater to everyone, you're not catering to anyone.” – Julius Wesche

  • Talk to representatives from your audience(s):

    • ”It's always really important to talk to a couple of your target group or potential target subgroups to kind of get an idea of like, what are they struggling with? Because if you talk about something that they might be like, kind of interested in, in the periphery, you will get less, interaction, they will share it not as much as if you really hit the target.” – Julius Wesche

  • Focus on one platform:

    • ”So I think that there's a good likelihood that one spreads oneself thin pretty quickly when you go across several platforms. In a perfect world, you would be available everywhere, but then you would also maybe talk to different target groups… But mostly our target groups are probably in one of the seven platforms that we have. Is it TikTok? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Facebook? Is it YouTube? Your target group is probably mostly on one of them. And what's good, if you can focus on one, is that all your content goes out on one and people know that there's always something happening and with always, I don't mean every day, like I would love to see more researchers who are out there every day, but if it's once a week, twice a week, that's good enough.” – Julius Wesche

  • Look for “Unicorn content”:

    • When you release a piece of content that does really well, work to understand what’s working and where you can improve.

    • “As you're analyzing what hooks work, what posts work, what podcasts work, look for the unicorn content... the things that are doing really well. Why did that content perform way better than any other content? Because then you can think about, okay, is it the format? Is it the way I talked? Was it the topic? What resonated with my target group? And then you kind of realise, ah, this is what they're really interested in. And then maybe you can use that insight to tweak your strategy.” – Julius Wesche

  • Provide value:

    • Social media is not just about promoting yourself. Provide value and engage with your audience by responding to comments and showing genuine interest in what they share

    • “The key to building visibility, building attention, building brand, and building impact over the long run is providing people value.” – Julius Wesche

    • “One of the researchers I was interviewing with said, ‘I read the things in my area and I feel I want to like put that into context. And I just write the three things that I think about it. And when I do that, a lot of people interact with me. And I thought, I hate social media, but it really gives me visibility and people seem to kind of like it.'‘ So this is like, with his experience, as a researcher, as a head of department, he gives context that other people who are new to this area, might not be able to do. And that's providing value. And then people connect with him and then people are already like craving for his next post because they learned from him. And that's how you build brand. That's how you build impact. You'd never build impact by saying, Hey, my work was decided 2000 times on, I don't know, Google scholar or whatever. No one cares.“ – Julius Wesche

    • “One way of creating content over time, at scale, is also documenting your life as a researcher, because a lot of people don't know how research life really looks like… One thing from Gary Vaynerchuk is like, document, don't create. It's okay to document your life as a researcher, as a PhD student. And then you also document your learnings, for example, and then you make your learnings available because you may be reading30 papers in a month or whatever, and no one else does that. So why not documenting your learnings as well? So that can also provide value.“ – Julius Wesche

  • Work on crafting good hooks:

    • “You need to have a hook in every post that you're doing, because why would anyone care? And if we think about LinkedIn, like, why would anyone hit that thing of, I want to read more if they think that the first seven words that you're writing is boring. Or if you make a video and your hook is not strong. So it's like, give the people a reason to watch the video in the first three seconds, because that's what you got.” – Julius Wesche

    • “I can tell you example a post without a hook, for example, on LinkedIn, when you have a new. paper out or a new report out or whatever it is, a post without a hook is, ‘Hey, I'm glad I'm happy to share that I got a new paper out in which journal, let's say energy resources and social science together in a consortium that was led by this and these people, and these and these people are my coauthors. It's been out since yesterday. I want to thank you everyone who's involved in this then you kind of say, okay, by the way, it's about this topic and, these are my learnings’ or not even. But that approach would mean you're writing three sentences about random stuff that no one cares about. That's a bit harsh to say, but it's like, when people see your post, they should know in the first three words what the topic is that you made the paper about. You have the opportunity to spark any kind of motivation to click on this, I want to read more button.“ – Julius Wesche

Credits:

  • Host & Producer: Chris Pahlow

  • Edited by: Laura Carolina Corrigan

  • Consulting Producers: Maia Tarrell, Michelle Joy

  • Music by: La Boucle and Blue Steel, courtesy of Epidemic Sound

Chris Pahlow
Chris Pahlow is an independent writer/director currently in post-production on his debut feature film PLAY IT SAFE. Chris has been fascinated with storytelling since he first earned his pen license and he’s spent the last ten years bringing stories to life through music videos, documentaries, and short films.
http://www.chrispahlow.com
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