Heather Doran

In November I created a poster for the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement ENGAGE Conference  . It was designed for the 'poster encounter' session which they run every year and summarised my top 10 for social media engagement, taken from my Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. As lots of people were interested in taking a photo of my poster I thought I should share it on my blog too. I've also supported the NCCPE in creating their WHAT WORKS Guide to Engaging the Public through Social Media and my Fellowship Report also supported the creation of this. It launched in November and it's a great guide which covers the main networks, content generation and evaluation. Well worth a read if you are interested in social media for engagement. In 2019 I will be launching a number of citizen science projects and using social media as a tool and a support network to do this. Follow what I am up to at the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science

In my current job I help researchers engage with the public about their research work. I talk with them about how they might engage with particular groups of people or how they might think about structuring a public talk. I especially like talking with people about different ways they can engage and how they might think about using online tools and social media to engage with others about what they are doing. This post is about maximising the potential of social media networks for engagement and measuring success online. It isn't all about the numbers.... The first thing I ask is, 'why do you want to do this?' Followed closely by, 'who is it you want to engage with or reach?' This second question is so important. It's no use chatting to fellow researchers and tweeting links to scientific research papers if you want to speak to people outside of the research field about their views on nature. Tailoring content and building the right network of contacts is so i