Won't someone help us spread the word about the Forum?

For some reason Ralf's response hit me in a way that no other response has. It made me realize that this forum has been around for more than twenty years, and in our modern society that's an eternity. When this forum started there were no smart phones, internet access was often through clunky old modems, and sites like Twitter and LinkedIn didn't exist.

With this in mind, is this thread even asking the right question? After all, the first step to solving a problem is not just admitting that there is one, but also identifying the right problem. Instead of asking how to get more people to view this forum, maybe we should be asking questions like "what is our core message?", "who is are target audience?", and "what is the most effective way to deliver our message to that audience?"

Consider, for example, where this forum is hosted. At first glance you might think that it makes sense to have a site targeted at would-be scientists hosted by an organization devoted to science. However, who comes to mind first when you think about jobs and careers? For most of us, the answer would probably be LinkedIn. Do we even have a LinkedIn presence?

Today's young scientists grew up in the age of Twitter. When something happens, that's the first place many of them turn to for more "information". Twitter isn't very good for the type of discussions we have here, but is there a way we can leverage the things it is good at?

I came across a comment recently that might be applicable to this discussion. The person making the comment was celebrating the fact that a "thirty-something" had recently been elected to something like a state legislature or congress. "At last! Someone who knows what things are like today, and not what they were like twenty years ago."

What do you think? Are we asking the right question, or should we be asking ourselves a different question?

Rich and Ralf -- great suggestions, but alas . . . there's no money flowing in our direction to develop this site further.

There are forum discussions like this one spread out all over the Internet. I have other interests besides science careers, and there are forum sites like this for every one of those. If I want to know something about reptiles, or stamps, or whatever, there will be a forum somewhere to post discussion topics.

I'm certainly active on LinkedIn. I'll check into whether there's any way to get the Forum referenced in a LinkedIn group -- but that seems like duplication. Perhaps there's a way to convert popular topics here into a LinkedIn discussion. But I think I'd prefer to direct the traffic here, so that readers have all those zillions of articles and resources that the AAAS has built over many years to review as well.

Perhaps someone who knows or uses Twitter can comment on whether that's a tool that might be used to direct more traffic to our site. Thanks,

Dave Jensen, Moderator

Dave

I agree - this being a volunteer activity does significantly limit our options. I believe, though, that there is still value in asking the question even if we may not be able to implement the solution.

I'm also not disparaging the 'forum' format. Unlike Twitter, you can have an in-depth discussion on various topics, and unlike blogs and podcasts, they are true two-way discussions. They also, as you say, allow you to archive those discussions for later reference.

A weakness, however, is that the target audience has to be able to find the forum. I just did a "quick-and-dirty" experiment where I performed four different google searches on science careers using different search terms. Here is what I found in looking at the first three pages of results:

"advice for early career scientists" - three articles from "Science" magazine on the first page (don't know if they referenced the forum)

"discussions about science careers" - this forum was the number one result

"how do I start a science career" - a couple of forum discussions appeared in the results

"science careers" - this forum was the fourth response

(As a side note, the last search also returned the AAAS "@ScienceCareers" Twitter handle. It looks like it's just used to announce positions that are available. There is also a #sciencecareers hashtag that might be more promising.)

My conclusions are 1) whether or not people find out about this forum depends on the question they ask, and 2) there is nothing in the search results that make us stand out and tell our target audience why the should check us out.

I agree with Ralf, the forum being not smartphone-friendly is likely having a negative impact on comnecting with your target audience.

If you look at the linkedin mobile statistics (not linking anything, but you can easily google it), not only are these numbers growing, but mobile visitors accounter for more than 50% last year.

Keep in mind that this isn't just about being able to browse a site on the phone. It's how social media interconnect with each other. You can, for example, easily link an instagram picture on your twitter account, and people will comment on it.

Thanks EKL -- this is good input. I work with the Forum all the time via my phone. I have no trouble doing so, except for the exceedingly small text.

Dave