My background is in ecology, and I never imagined I would be diving head first into the world of Twitter, Facebook and blogging. As a background, I am a fairly private person who shares little via social media. I've always thought of social media as the 21st century's proverbial peacock feathers, but with the ability to edit out the feathers you don't want others to see. That is, until I entered into the world of communications professionally. Social media is more than bragging or showing off. The online communities I've discovered through work and my personal interests are sharing credible, interesting and relevant stories on a constant basis that keep me informed and curious.
So far my career has led me from working as a research assistant (counting caterpillars and catching butterflies) to managing a biological research station. Currently, I am working as an Access Coordinator in the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute's Information Centre. Half of my time is spent on communicating with private landowners and leaseholders throughout Alberta to gain access to land for biodiversity inventories. This mostly involves telephone calls and face to face meetings. However, the remaining half of my time is directed at engaging the public and key stakeholders to inform them of the existence and importance of our organization., which relies more heavily on broad media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Like many other participants in this course, I work for a not-for-profit with big dreams, high expectations and a limited budget. We are often finding ourselves wanting or expecting to do more than we can afford with our time and finances, which leaves our small communications team scrambling to pull of many tasks and products as efficiently as possible. My goal is to learn how to make my communications efforts more efficient and effective, to maximize my impact and outreach. I would love to learn how to write better tweets and posts that make people actually stop and think, rather than adding to the infinite number of social media blurbs their eyes skim over on an almost constant basis. I want people to connect and interact with us so that they are not only aware of the importance of biodiversity, but actually care about it. I would also like to learn how to create an engaged audience for an organization that's just beginning to dip it's toes into the public outreach waters.
Let's make mistakes and get learning!
Great catchy title Elyse! Thanks for sharing. I think your "want"; that people actually care about biodiversity, is something that all brands, organisations, people, etc...also want. Writing in a certain way and connecting in positive ways online can help lever that change.
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