By Ruth Seeley, No Spin PR.

A little over a year ago, Ruth Seeley – a freelance communications consultant – rather bravely approached me with a proposition:  She would help me develop a social media strategy for 2020 Science, if I would let her write the experience up as a case study.  Was she mad?  Did she not know how impossibly contrary scientists are to work with?  Or was she simply a sucker for punishment?  Twelve months on, I’m pleased to say that Ruth is still speaking to me.  But how did the experiment go?  To find out, read on… -AM

Despite having once shared an award for client service with a much more senior colleague, I would be the first to admit that client service – in the sense of getting along with and working closely, productively, and harmoniously with clients – has never been my strong suit. As an ex-global public relations employee gone (briefly) ‘corporate’ and now a solopreneur, I’ve had many challenges, not least of which was aligning myself with the kind of clients who don’t need a lot of handholding and who have either a learned or an instinctive understanding of what public relations is and what it can do for them. Managing client expectations and educating them is fine and dandy when you have a client willing and able to pay for their learning curve. Being asked to teach, explain, or worse, being second-guessed at every step of the way (which is what tends to happen when your client is another solopreneur with little corporate experience and a miniscule budget) is, frankly, both intolerable and unprofitable. Another real stumbling block for me was the fact that I no longer had a team – virtual or in-person – to draw upon. Nor an IT department to help me with technological challenges, ranging from viruses to actual laptop meltdowns. Couple that with the fact that I decided a decade ago that it really was time to stop and smell the roses, and I was faced with a dilemma when I decided to give public relations one more shot in late 2008 and see what I could make of No Spin PR.

Having decided that I wanted to focus on clients in the nanotechnology and clean energy technology sectors, I set up a Google Alert on nanotechnology and started doing my research. Among the first of the nanotech blogs I found was Andrew Maynard’s, and to my delight, one of the first 2020science posts I read was this one. As an English major I felt myself on firm ground – he was talking about books, after all, one or two of which I’d actually read. Emboldened by the reading I’d done to date on social media in general and the blogosphere in particular, I didn’t hesitate to comment. Twice, in fact, on that post. I also did some research on Andrew Maynard, and particularly liked what I saw of the way he handled himself on the Fred Friendly Town Hall simulations and how obviously genuine he was as evidenced by the Twinkie Guide to Nanotechnology. He wasn’t smooth and he wasn’t exactly succinct [so much for practicing in front of the mirror! -AM], but his passion for his subject matter, his desire to communicate effectively and his patience, humour, wit, and intelligence shone through. The fact that he was obviously having a good time, more than anything else, made me want to work with him.

When I concluded I could no longer ignore Twitter as I began my social media immersion, I searched for, found him, and started following him on Twitter in late 2008. To my surprise,  he was busily conducting a social media experiment – five tweets per day (and only five) over the course of a week, in an attempt to impart meaningful information on emerging technologies, including both nanotechnology and synthetic biology, 140 characters at a time (there were no links in those tweets). And so I approached him via email to ask if I could help him develop a social media strategy for 2020science.  Surprisingly, he agreed. Our formal terms were simple: I would provide my services on a pro bono basis if he would allow me to write a case study at the end of 2009 that would demonstrate both my social media and nanotechnology expertise (and he would have the right to review and approve the case study).

From the beginning, Andrew was an amenable but amusing client [I was clearly a little confused about the client-consultant relationship –AM]. I started writing plans using the formulas I’d been taught – call them RACE (research, action, communicate, evaluate – here’s an example of one campaign using that formula) or whatever you like, you begin with four basic questions: Where are we now, where do we want to be, how will we get there, and how will we know we’ve arrived? Situational analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics that map to strategy, and some form of measurement. I did MindMaps (he liked the MindMaps) [J -AM]. I urged him to create YouTube channels, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. I nagged him to get Google Analytics on the blog. I touted the benefits of podcasting [repeatedly, I recall –AM]. I attached dates to various initiatives. Somehow this led to several blog redesigns in the first quarter of 2009, for which I was inevitably blamed (I had said nothing about redesigning the blog, I swear!).  In terms of goals, I think the only one I could get him to commit to was the overarching goal of having fun. I stopped talking about goals, although I do recall saying our target for Twitter followers for the year should be 5000 followers. Looking back at my plans, I see that on January 21, 2009, 2020science was following 48 people and had 191 followers. I urged Andrew to take his personal branding a little more seriously, and to at least create an email signature that included his blog address and his Twitter ID. He saw the good sense of that suggestion and immediately implemented it. We stopped revising the plan.

And it was at that point that all sorts of good things began to happen. Andrew created an Alltop channel for 2020science. In mid-February, Lon Cohen recommended Andrew in a Mashable post on Twitter professors, and the next month Andrew himself approached Mashable about writing a post on tweeps (primarily although not exclusively science folks) who would change your perspective on reality. Except, of course, being British, he was adamant about referring to them as twits rather than tweeps. I had some input into the choice of those he recommended, and Andrew took some of my advice (ok, in this instance he was actually pretty tractable, let me do some editing, and he certainly honoured my wish not to be included in the list! Because, you know, I am not the story – he’s the story). And no one seemed to mind, although the sudden increase in followers led some of the 13 listed to conclude their computers had caught a virus – it didn’t occur to me till after the article was posted that we should have given them a heads up that they were about to be mentioned in the article [put it down to being British again, but I did get a chuckle from watching the 13 tweeps go through the same confusion I experienced after appearing on Lon’s list – I seriously thought I was the unwitting victim of a spam-attack! –AM] . Less than three months after beginning to approach his social media efforts more strategically, 2020science had more than 5000 followers on Twitter.

In terms of other forms of measurement, the blog’s Technorati  authority has increased from 11 on January 21, 2009, to 122 as of January 3, 2010 [although with the new rating system, I have no idea what this means – AM]. Almost 500 people now subscribe to the 2020science RSS feed (up from 8 on 21/1/09) – and more than 5700 followers on Twitter. I was initially concerned about Andrew’s following:follower ratio (he is still only following 195 tweeps – fine – twits). But by assiduously checking his @messages he has been able to interact with far more than the 195 folks he follows, and has also, I gather from our last conversation, managed to not drive himself insane attempting to cope with the tsunami of information that is Twitter while continuing to hold down a full-time job, stay married, and actually be present in his relationship with his children.

More important, he has embraced the principles of social media so surely and so instinctively that he has made working with him a constant pleasure and a continuous learning experience for me. He’s (a little stiffly, mind you, and with properly British reserve) embraced Facebook and if you don’t contribute your suggestions regarding what you’d like to see on the 2020science blog you will not be eligible to win one of the brilliant (and my current favourite coffee-drinking vessel) 2020science blog mugs. But in addition to maintaining his own enthusiasm for blogging and communicating about science, technology, society and innovation, he has also succeeded in creating a community of folks who are asking some of the questions that need to be asked in these still-early days of the 21^st Century: who really benefits from the scientific research that’s being done? How can we share the innovative technology we’re capable of producing? How do we communicate effectively – and by that I mean, how do we manage to both listen and to express our own point of view or that of our organization in order to arrive at agreement rather than polarized entrenchment of existing views? From my own perspective, what he’s taught me is that letting go of the message, giving the client his head, as it were (or, you know, enough rope to hang himself), and adopting a far more hands-off, coach/consultant role rather than creating scripts that must then be memorized and delivered after arduous rehearsal, is the way to go, and is the future of public relations rather than its death knell.

2010 – the year of the 2020science podcast series? Stay tuned. My middle name is Persistence.

Despite my quips above, this has been a great year working with Ruth.  At the beginning of the year, I really didn’t know where I was going with 2020 Science.  I still don’t know, but now I don’t know with style!  Actually, that’s not true – as she says, Ruth forced me to take the blog—and the 2020 Science brand—seriously, and think more clearly about what I was trying to achieve.  In some ways I was a difficult client – I listened patiently to Ruth’s suggestions, then happily went off and did my own thing!  But at the end of the day we forged a partnership that worked very well.  In reality, she coached me to work effectively with social media—acting as a guide, sounding board and, occasionally, a taskmaster (but not often).

So was the experience worthwhile?  Absolutely!  2020 Science always will be something of a niche blog.  But at least it’s now a social media-savvy niche blog, written by someone who has a slightly better idea of why he’s doing it than he did a year ago.

But I do draw the line at podcasts–for now… -AM

Now you see what I’m dealing with – he asks me to write a guest blog and thinks he can have the last word!