Scientists are shifting their attention from traditional to social media

The amount of information available and to which we have access is always growing. The number of papers being published does not stop increasing, and a more dominant part of a scientist job is to cut through the noise. In [@ghanadan2016Catalytic Experiences: Persuading Scientists and Clinicianswith Effective Digital Marketing], the argument is that the attention is shifting towards social media, as evidenced by the following facts:

Trade show attendance is declining or stalling

Even in expanding fields, the number of people showing up to trade shows is stalling. In other cases it is even declining. I wonder if trade shows can be compared to conferences.

Email open rates are low

Emails became the de-facto way for companies to reach their customers directly, without intermediaries. However, people have busy inboxes which translates into extremely low open rates. The rates in any case, seem to correlate with the values also for other marketing activities, not only scientific ones.

Banner clicks remain steady

The efficiency of banners on websites is measured through click rates. From this perspective, banners receive a very low click-rate and most are of very low value, i.e. done by mistake, or by people not interesting in the product. However, banners also help placing a brand in the eyes of potential consumers, which is much more intangible

Social media started playing a more relevant role

Scientists, as well as anybody else, are spending an increasing amount of time on social media websites (see: social networks exploit the reward equation). People share both personal and professional information on them. This applies to generic networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc.) but also to specific ones such as Research Gate.

There is some evidence that research shared on Twitter gets more citations. This means that if someone (i.e. a marketeer) wants to grab a scientist attention, must do so in the same arena where everybody else is competing for attention: social networks.

Literature note on Catalytic Experiences - Hamid Ghanadan