{"id":231,"date":"2016-12-21T22:30:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T22:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/research-marketing\/?p=231"},"modified":"2017-11-01T13:56:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T13:56:43","slug":"facebook-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/knowledge-exchange-and-research-impact\/2016\/12\/21\/facebook-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging our followers through Facebook Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Promoting our research and expertise using social media is not a new thing, but over this past year we\u2019ve done much more to think about the ways in which we\u2019re using our main social channels to grow our audiences and better engage people with our stories. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the University\u2019s Twitter and Facebook, we\u2019ve seen a significant jump in numbers for our followers and much more engagement (retweets \/ likes) to boot. More than 50,000 people now follow @uniofbath<\/a> on Twitter and our Facebook page (\/uniofbath<\/a>) has over 55,000 likes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a huge audience of students past and present, parents, important stakeholders from different sectors, international partners, media contacts; not to mention staff and members of the local community, each getting updates on our activities on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

With better planning of more engaging content (videos, photos, GIFs<\/a>) we\u2019ve grown our audience and we\u2019re getting more interaction (leading to increased web traffic on our site) as a result.<\/p>\n

Going live<\/h2>\n

For the last two months we\u2019ve also trialled Facebook Live events<\/a>. This format grew in prominence in 2016 having been adopted by certain media organisations and high profile individuals.<\/p>\n

Facebook Live<\/a> is a free service enabling Facebook users to film content on their iPhones or tablets to broadcast to their followers. As it goes out, followers pose questions, comment on discussions, and others can watch again after the event if they missed it live the first time.<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/a>
Facebook Live in our Department of Poltitics, Languages & International Studies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019ve used this twice, both times with the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies<\/a>, drawing on the expertise of their researchers to comment on the big issues of the day: Trump and Brexit<\/a> in November (with Professor Charlie Lees<\/a>) and Europe at a crossroads<\/a> in December (with Professor Anna Bull<\/a> and Dr Aurelien Mondon<\/a> - see our videos below).<\/p>\n

These are broadcasts of between 20-30 minutes, filmed in 1W on an iPhone, and timed to coincide with people\u2019s lunch breaks (they went out at 12.30PM). With just two examples they\u2019ve shown the potential in using this format to tell other research stories from right across the University in 2017. Upcoming events could include demonstrating research live, going into labs and conducting interviews out and about on campus; we're working on plans.<\/p>\n

Our November Live event drew a crowd of nearly 2,000 and our December Live event, filmed on Wednesday 21 December, has already<\/em> significantly surpassed that (and will continue to grow in reach). Both elicited interesting questions and discussion points from far and wide.<\/p>\n

Watch again<\/h2>\n

Europe at a crossroads in 2017<\/em><\/h3>\n