Department of Audiology Faculty Articles

Creating Clinical Research Impact Through Social Media: Five Easy Steps to Get Started

ORCID

0000-0003-1239-1072, 0000-0003-4443-4006, 0000-0001-6770-4377

Publisher

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

ISSN

2381-473X

Publication Date

6-2022

Keywords

clinical impact, research, social media

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to provide a brief tutorial on how to get started with creating clinical impact of research through the use of varied social media channels.

Method: We summarize the literature and provide examples for creating social media content for clinical research impact.

Results: We describe a five-step process for creating clinical impact: (a) identify your goal or purpose of creating impact for a specific project, (b) identify your target audience and match it to a social media platform, (c) study benchmark posts made by active users and influencers on your social media outlet of interest, (d) create novel and engaging content, and (e) share content and track responses.

Conclusions: Creating clinical impact of research through social media does not have to be overwhelming or time consuming and is an important part of disseminating research evidence to help bridge the research-to-practice gap. Readers will be able to share their work on social media to begin creating clinical impact because of reading this tutorial.

The purpose of this tutorial is to provide a brief tutorial on how to get started creating clinical impact of research through use of social media channels. As Spencer (2022) describes, clinical impact documents the distribution and use of research by clinicians and other practitioners for evidence-based practice (EBP), whereas science impact documents the distribution and use of research by scientists. In this article, we describe how to use social media to disseminate research for the purpose of creating clinical impact. Nicholson and Smith (2022) provide an in-depth tutorial describing how to document scientific and clinical impact of research for the purpose of annual review or promotion and tenure applications. They provide detailed steps regarding the use of bibliometric and alternative metrics to document impact of research. Guidelines and guidance for documenting evidence of scientific or clinical impact of social media for purposes of annual review, promotion and tenure have also been published elsewhere (Acquaviva et al., 2020; Bardus et al., 2020; Sotto-Santiago et al., 2020). Here, we specifically focus on how to create clinical impact using social media.

Another article in this forum describes the key domains of knowledge translation and knowledge brokering strategies (Douglas et al., 2022). Specifically, some researchers may wish to partner with a knowledge broker (i.e., a professional who connects and exchanges knowledge across a boundary such as the research-to-practice gap) to help disseminate their work to clinical audiences, yet others may have the capacity, motivation, and enthusiasm to communicate the science to clinicians. See Douglas et al. for more information and details about a knowledge broker's role in communication sciences and disorders (CSDs).

This tutorial assumes that readers will benefit from learning how to disseminate their work on social media and see value in doing so to engage with a wider or different audience. We describe a process for clinical researchers, who wish to communicate their scientific findings, to enhance the impact of their work in clinical contexts using social media. To accomplish this, we offer five discrete steps.

(1) Identify your goal or purpose of creating impact for a specific project.
(2) Identify your target audience and match it to a social media platform.
(3) Study benchmark posts made by active users and influencers on your social media outlet of interest.
(4) Create novel and engaging content.
(5) Share content and track responses.

Each step is described in further detail..

DOI

10.1044/2022_PERSP-21-00208

Volume

7

Issue

3

First Page

669

Last Page

678

Disciplines

Communication Sciences and Disorders | Medicine and Health Sciences | Speech and Hearing Science | Speech Pathology and Audiology

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