Social Media’s Limited Impact on Promoting Scientific Articles: The Case of ‘Circulation’
Why social media isn’t an effective way to promote scientific articles?
Social media is a powerful way to promote mass-market content and increase exposure. Facebook, in particular, has a content-friendly algorithm that rewards users for writing articles, with a preference for long-form ones.
Given these factors, it’s easy to assume that Facebook would be an effective platform to drive views to your scientific articles. Increased views can lead to higher citation rates, which is desirable for academic content. However, the reality is different.
The Experiment: How ‘Circulation’ Tested Social Media’s Effectiveness
Facebook encourages users to remain on its platform rather than directing them to external sites. This means it’s actively discouraging its 1.86 billion active monthly users from leaving the platform to access your content.
Additionally, a two-month study conducted last year revealed that Twitter, another major social network, is among the least effective platforms for engaging users with scientific content.
The most compelling evidence comes from a randomized, controlled study conducted by Caroline S. Fox and her colleagues on articles published in Circulation in 2016. Their research found that social media had no effect on the pageviews of a medical journal. Even with the use of paid ads, no significant benefit was observed from using either Facebook or Twitter.
This post will give you a breakdown of the experiment conducted by Fox et. al1 and its implications for content creators and consumers.
Key Findings: Why Social Media Didn’t Boost Page Views
The experiment
In their study, 152 original articles published in Circulation, a leading weekly journal on cardiovascular medicine, were used to test the effectiveness of social media promotion. These articles, published between January 13 and September 22, 2015, were randomly assigned to either a control group (n=78) or a social media group (n=74). The social media group’s articles were promoted via Facebook and Twitter, while the control group received no additional promotion.
Design schematic from Fox et al 2016
The social media group promotion strategies included:
- Posts with images and statistics linking readers to newly published articles on both Facebook and Twitter
- 3 posts were published per article - once when it was published and two more at 11 am and 3 pm the next day
- Facebook posts were promoted using $10 worth of paid ads to their target audience
- Outside the scope of the experiment, Circulation’s Twitter and Facebook accounts maintained engagement by posting and reposting content (2-7 posts per day). Both organic and paid traffic were used as part of the promotion, and their marketing efforts were highly effective, just not in the way the researchers had hoped. Both their Facebook likes and Twitter followers increased significantly during the study. However, this did not correlate to increased page views for the promoted articles.
Implications for Publishers: Exploring Alternative Strategies
The results
As a whole, the combined efforts of the researchers — the paid ads, the social media activity, and even the growing number of followers — didn’t do anything for Circulation’s page views. The mean number of 30-day views the 2 groups received per article was extremely close: 616 for the Social Media arm and 597.2 for the No Social Media arm. The Median figure was a little further apart - 499.5 in the social media arm and 450.5 in the control arm - but neither difference was statistically significant.
Section of Figure 2 from Fox et al 2016 depicting the cumulative percent of 30-day page views by treatment arm.
Potential implications and questions
The study revealed no significant difference in 30-day page views, despite the use of best-practice promotional strategies on two of the web’s biggest social networks: Twitter and Facebook. While social media marketing was highly effective in driving a 50% increase in followers on both platforms, these additional followers did not translate into more article views.
While this is not ideal for those banking on social networks to drum up readers for your academic content, there are many effective ways to market scientific articles — and one of them involves social media, albeit in a different way.
Here’s what this experiment means for you as a content publisher or consumer:
Takeaway 1 - Social media doesn’t drive organic traffic
If you’re a marketer, you probably know that Facebook has been reducing its organic reach in recent years. You might also know that Twitter’s algorithm is moving in a similar direction, with Ogilvy and Mather’s social arm saying that ‘organic reach will approach zero’ soon.
Even if Facebook and Twitter have made it abundantly clear that they’re diminishing the power of organic traffic, it’s still shocking that going from 46,000 to 87,000 likes on Facebook and 6,700 to 10,000 followers on Twitter didn’t do anything for Circulation’s views in the experiment. That’s why the first takeaway from the experiment is that social media doesn’t drive organic traffic, at least for academic content.
Takeaway 2 - Social platforms want you to stay around
Twitter and Facebook are the world’s biggest social media sites. In the last two years, both have made significant steps to fill their platforms with new (and varied) content.
First, Twitter acquired Periscope for $120 million so users could view live videos within their content ecosystem. Then, Facebook responded by giving us Live (for streaming) and Notes (for articles).
The message is clear: both social media platforms want you to consume more content through them. They don’t want you taking visitors to your site.
Unfortunately, what this appears to mean for publishers is that users resist visiting their journals to read articles. The experiment showed that even paid ads are no longer effective at drawing users out of a social platform.
Takeaway 3 - It’s time for other solutions
Earlier, we mentioned that Twitter provides less user engagement than other platforms. This is consistent with the results of this experiment, in which social media provided no significant boost to page views.
It’s also consistent with what we know about Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms actively keeping users focused on their content instead of your content.
This might worry you if you’re a publisher, researcher, doctor, or pharmaceutical company. Social media is keeping your content from the people who want and need it — which means it’s time to consider other ways of getting exposure.
One solution is to build your own contact list. When you have people’s e-mails and LinkedIn profile adds, you can reach them anytime. You no longer depend on Twitter or Facebook to get in touch with your target audience.
Another strategy is to use specialist services to get your content in front of the right readers. In the 2-month study we ran, PubMed and TrendMD — two services that put relevant content in front of interested readers — drove more engagement than Twitter, Google, and Google Scholar.
Key takeaway:
- Optimize your Facebook and Twitter to increase your brand awareness, but consider other options if you're looking to increase your readership.
- This post summarized the research conducted by Caroline S. Fox and her colleagues in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
- 1. Fox, C.S., Gurary, E.B., Ryan, J., Bonaca, M., Barry, K., Loscalzo, J., Massaro, J. (2016) Randomized Controlled Trial of Social Media: Effect of Increased Intensity of the Intervention. J Am Heart Assoc 5:e003088 doi: 10.1161/JAHA.115.003088↩
