How do you use social media?

If there’s one communication channel that has ‘shrunk’ the world more than any other, it’s social media.

As an organisation we have been proactive in adopting new technologies and our presence is established across multiple social networks. Over the last year, we have done a lot of work to find out what people want from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s social media profiles and we have learned a lot.

Just a decade ago, it would be fair to say, librarians saw little use for social media in a professional context. But times have changed. Librarians are now using social media in a variety of ways and we can see clear similarities between their objectives for using it and our own.

According to a 2014 survey, the top three objectives librarians have for using social media were:

• to promote events
• to promote library services
• to promote resources/collections at the library

A little further down the list, we saw objectives such as:

• connecting new students joining the university
• engaging with the academic community
• connecting with distance learners

Like us, librarians have until now been focused on promoting their resources and services. But, like us, it looks like librarians have started to think about using social media more as a way of connecting with communities, listening to opinion. Starting two-way conversations in friendly, yet professional voice is high on the agenda now the social media algorithms are stamping out the organic reach of promotional posts.

We welcome this, and the opportunity to get to know our audience a bit better. We’d like to hear your take on the changes social networks are currently going through.

How are you using social media? Which networks do you prefer? Get in touch and let’s talk, socially @RoySocChem.