How Social Media Helped Research Dissemination 

Client

uOttawa Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services (CRECS) / Centre de recherche sur les services éducatifs et communautaires (CRSEC)

Timeline

January 2021-Present

Goal

Increase the awareness of the research of CRECS members and the CRECS brand throughout the uOttawa campus and other Ottawa educational/community services. Reach this goal using the power of social media, and increasing the audience reach of current social media accounts. 

Starting Point

CRECS collaborates in research, evaluation, and training with organizations in the educational, social service, and health sectors to improve social programs and policies for citizens. Following a previous Co-Op student placement, CRECS had their branding and social media channels set up but needed help continuing to increase the reach and engagement on the chosen channels. 

CRECS had a group of students and researchers excited to share their research but felt like not enough people on campus or in the Ottawa community knew who they were.  

Strategy 

Our strategy to solve this issue was using their current social media platforms where their audience was most active on, Twitter and LinkedIn, to increase their social media presence. The first problem was communicating the in-depth and educational research in such a short amount of characters and in a way that the average student would be able to understand and relate to. To do this, we transformed different research papers into easy to read and understand graphics. Later on, we established a new way of designing graphics to be 100% accessible. 

We also took note of other educational and social organizations in the communities and relevant faces on campus to keep note of on social media. We began first by following all the community organizations and researchers mentioned. We recognized that CRECS is a professional and school organization, and therefore cannot be following or interacting with accounts in an unprofessional way. To better get to know what CRECS wanted their community to be like, and learn the guidelines, we would send weekly emails with a list of possible interactions on Twitter to be approved. Once approved, we would like and retweet the listed tweets, increasing CRECS’ involvement in the community online. 

Once we were in the groove of things, we began to develop content calendars that ensured we were putting out content consistently to increase the reach of the posts. By posting multiple times a week on each platform, the audience became used to seeing CRECS on Twitter and LinkedIn and therefore creating a brand remembrance effect. 

Results 

During our second and third weeks working with CRECS, we began to see their brand grow. At the beginning of working with CRECS, we saw six interactions in a week and the organization had 390 followers on Twitter and 8 on LinkedIn. 

By the third week, CRECS had doubled their LinkedIn followers and reached the 400 follower mark on Twitter. Compared to the average six engagements we saw in the first week, in the second and third week we saw 61 total engagements on Twitter. 

A highlight of our work with CRECS was a post of a CRECS researcher on LinkedIn receiving 36 Likes and 10 Comments, the most CRECS has seen on their LinkedIn. Most importantly, the post also allowed for the researcher to reconnect with an old colleague that reached out after having seen the post on LinkedIn. 

Now, after a little less than a year working with CRECS, CRECS has 579 followers on Twitter and 31 on LinkedIn. They also noted seeing more people than ever at their events and feel more engaged in their community! 

Conclusion

We are so grateful for our work with CRECS, not only did they have faith in us by being our first ever client, but we got to work towards a goal of bettering the Ottawa community as a whole. We now continue working with CRECS on their Twitter, LinkedIn and a secret upcoming project!

Client Testimonial:

 “The Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services (CRECS) at the University of Ottawa has used Seed and Soil's marketing services for nearly eight months and intends to pursue a partnership for the 2021-2022 academic year. Lauren and Sonia have enhanced the CRECS's online presence and have increased its social media followership by several dozens. More members than ever before attend events, reach out via email, and like and retweet content. These two young, albeit professional, women and their budding business have become integral to the CRECS' knowledge mobilization efforts and communications!”