Our Top 5 Tips for what you should be doing now to make sure your research gets the reach it deserves in 2022
Once again, uncertainty looks like it could play a defining role in the coming year. But that shouldn’t stop you from being ambitious with the campaigns and content that you create to shine a light on the latest research and innovation.
To help you do that, over the coming months we’ll be creating blog posts, videos, newsletters and podcasts brimming with ideas and inspiration about how to maximize the impact of your research comms.
To kick things off, here are our Top 5 Tips for what you should be doing now to make sure your research gets the reach it deserves in 2022.
Plan ahead for the best results
At Orinoco we love it when research groups come to us for help getting the word out about their amazing work. And we love it even more when they give us more than two weeks’ notice before they’re due to publish and promote that work!
The creation of any digital content - videos, animations, podcasts or infographics - benefits from time: time to develop the ideas properly, to tightly plan the project, and to execute.
There’s no fixed turnaround time for a video. How long it takes to produce depends on many factors, including duration, style, and complexity of the subject matter. But, as a general rule, the earlier that we're involved the better the job we can do.
So, if you agree that sharing your research matters then don’t make it an afterthought. And if you’re looking to partner with media professionals to help you disseminate your findings or share your ideas, then be sure to give them as much advance notice as possible.
That early exposure to your project will give us enough time to unlock its full storytelling potential and to translate it effectively into compelling video content.
There’s value in volume
If you’re in charge of communications for a larger research institute or company that is likely to have multiple stories to tell over the course of the year, think about commissioning a batch of videos at once.
They don’t all have to be produced and released in one go - you don’t even have to know upfront what all of them are going to be about - but there are savings to be made by commissioning content at higher volumes.
Much of the work in creating impactful audiovisual content comes in the development phase. That’s when we assess your needs, get in the minds of your target audience, craft the right approach and develop the best tone and style to meet your audience’s tastes. It’s in this phase when most of the value is created, so it makes sense to apply that value across multiple pieces of content, rather than using it all up on a single video or animation.
Aside from being more cost-effective, commissioning multiple pieces of content at once has the added benefit of allowing you to plan your content over the longer-term. We always view our relationship with clients as a collaborative and creative partnership. Ideally that means working with you to develop an ongoing communications campaign that will deliver fresh, up-to-date video content to your audience on a regular basis.
Remote control
For the next few months, at least, in-person filming might be unpredictable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use video to get the word out about your new research.
The easiest answer in many cases will be to do it remotely. At Orinoco we were already developing remote filming techniques for our video abstracts service before the pandemic kicked in. Since then we’ve been refining our processes and we’re now offering remote production as a legitimate alternative to in-person filming.
This isn’t a compromise being forced on us by circumstances. With the right software, hardware and creative thinking, remotely produced videos can be hugely impactful and engaging. You just need to embrace the possibilities.
For example, not long ago the idea of recording an interview via a video conferencing platform would have been seen as an unappealing last resort. But now there are specialist platforms that allow for high-definition, locally recorded interviews that are unaffected by connection issues.
Coupled with the right hardware (an HD webcam and USB microphone) and you’ve got yourself a high-quality interview recording.
Remote interviews also allow for the possibility of treatment in the edit that can lift the production values even higher.
With creative cropping and manipulation of the interview you can highlight key messages with onscreen text, and bring the facts and figures to life with lively motion graphics.
Have you listened to these episodes of the Research Comms podcast?
Build up a reference library
One of the greatest favours that a client can do for us when we start working together on a new project is to come armed with some visual references for the kind of video they’re looking to achieve.
Articulating what you want from a video or animation can be challenging, especially if it’s not something you’ve had to do before. Showing us some examples of videos you like is a great way of getting the conversation going and helping us to identify what you’re looking for.
So, it’s a good idea to always be making a note of content that you like whenever you come across it. You can do that on a google doc, a spreadsheet, via screenshots on your phone, scribbles in a notebook, whatever. The important thing is to log it in some form as soon as you see the content, or it’s likely to slip out of mind by the time you’re looking to create your own video.
Whether you decide to work with content creation professionals or you’re going it alone, having a library of references to help guide your creative direction will be a massive help when you start to develop your ideas.
Do your research!
It’s somewhat ironic that people tasked with the communication of research often fail to take advantage of the wealth of published research available about effective research communication.
In the last year alone over 50,000 articles about communicating research were indexed by google scholar, detailing the most effective ways to communicate science and other forms of research. Much of it is detailed and rigorous and will give you fresh insights into how you can provide valuable engagements with your research-focused content.
If you don’t have time to sift through dozens of papers a month then allow us to do it for you. Later this month we’ll be launching a new video series - Research Revealed - where I’ll be interviewing researchers about recently published papers that highlight the latest thinking on effective research communication.
Watch this space!
TAKE A LISTEN TO OUR RESEARCH COMMS PODCAST FOR MORE IDEAS AND INSPIRATION
or wherever you listen to your podcasts…
Research Comms is presented by Peter Barker, director of Orinoco Communications, a digital communications and content creation agency that specialises in helping to communicate research. Find out how we’ve helped research organisations like yours by taking a look at past projects…
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