In an AIC blog post, PSP student Mariana Di Giacomo discusses managing the account "@RealScientists" on Twitter to reach a broad network of people and advocate for conservation. From Conservators Converse, the blog of the American Institute for Conservation:
Being on Twitter is extremely fun for me. People are hilarious and
I’m constantly learning from those I follow. As a paleontologist, I am
drawn towards fossils, and Twitter is no different. I follow
paleontologists, museums, and even SUE the T. rex. I also have
another interest, and that is conservation of museum collections. This
makes me also follow conservators, organizations, and anyone who tweets
about these topics.
A while ago, I signed up to manage the account @RealScientists,
hoping to get the word out about my work in #FossilConservation. This
account has over 66,500 followers, and these numbers increase weekly
with every person curating the account. The idea of doing this felt
exciting, but also scary because I was afraid I was not going to be able
to manage speaking to such a huge audience. When one of the admins of
the account contacted me, I was super happy to have the opportunity to
share my work.
Curating the account means you can tweet as often as you want for a
whole week. You are free to do polls, engage in Q&As, talk about
your science, and even about yourself. It is a great way for others in
the Twittersphere to know you, and to learn from you. I tweeted mostly
about my experience in paleontology collections, but also focused on
conservation.
There is one tweet in particular I want to share because I did not
expect it to be so popular, and for people to be so interested. It was a
tweet about the 10 agents of deterioration.
My idea was to make the tweet accessible to those not working in
conservation, by using emojis. This proved to be an excellent choice;
the tweet has 330 likes, 146 retweets (plus 25 retweets with comment),
and was seen by more than 32,000 users. Who knew people would be so
excited about preventive conservation and collections care?
To read Mariana's full blog post about the response to her tweet and talking with the public about conservation, click here.
