A completely organic LinkedIn strategy to revolutionize the marketing of scientific communication, and to tell the world about TCS’ best kept secret – TCS Research.
The word ‘science’ conjures up new ideas, methods and research. However, there is a higher order purpose to science – knowledge advancement.
There was a need to introduce innovative ways of marketing science. As the research division behind India’s most valuable IT services brand, we took on this onus.
The marketing challenges we aimed to solve were:
- Scientific Communications needed a new take: With science and its ability to impact the world by solving problems faced by industries and society, it was time for scientific content innovation.
- Technical nature of content: Scientific content needed to be simplified to make it consumable for a non-expert reader without making it sound trivial. We had to make complex science and technology topics/themes more accessible and understandable to a non-scientific audience. View here.
- Carving out a distinct identity for TCS Research: TCS, with over 600,000 employees, is globally known for its excellence in IT services, consulting and business solutions. Few are aware that it is a research-led organization.
- Engagement: Invoke a sense of pride and nostalgia among current employees, customers, researchers, and society, attracting quality talent to further research, and making the TCS family aware of the hidden gem in their midst!
- Stand Out: Our content needed to stand out in a product and web-dominated world. An innovative spin to scientific communications was required
Strategy:
TCS Research conducts research across multi-disciplinary areas ranging from metagenomics to space technology. Given this wide array of research, there exists a rich content repository – inventions, inventors, patents, publications, whitepapers, and more.
To communicate these to the larger and relevant audience, we chose LinkedIn as the platform to launch our strategy. Given the nature of our content and our target audience segments like customers, researchers in industry and academia, talent and society, it was ideal.
We then developed a people-centric and impact-oriented approach to marketing scientific communications. In simpler words, a human touch was added to scientific content to highlight how it helps to solve real-world problems and its impact. View here.
Our major innovation was breaking down complex and highly technical content into very consumable, social-media friendly stories .
We used these stories to create a strong LinkedIn Presence and nurture an online engaging community for TCS Research.
Execution:
- We started with the repository of inventions, inventors, patents, publications, and more. Each of these has positively impacted the world over decades and each has a story to tell.
- To effectively execute our LinkedIn strategy, each story was different and needed a custom narrative with distinct creatives, ensuring high engagement while highlighting the key message. How could this be possible with something highly complex, like a patent? View our LinkedIn post to find out.
- Multiple formats were explored. Apart from tailoring the message of every story, their design also varied ranging quote cards, carousels, photos, videos for LinkedIn posts. View here.
- To make it more understandable, our people – the scientists - were positioned to explain a concept/theme, or personifications were used in storytelling. View here.
- To make it useful to the audience, the impact and real-world applications were highlighted.
- Each story was integrated wherein, the viewer would be redirected to a page on our website, YouTube or other channels to know more.
- We used storytelling to make our LinkedIn posts deeply resonate with people outside Research and Science too.
- We used effective LinkedIn Hashtags that were highly related to our scientific content to reach the right audience.
- We aligned stories with reactive days to get more visibility. View our LinkedIn post for World Earth Day.
- Our LinkedIn page’s bio captures the vision of TCS Research.
- We leverage the cover image dynamically, constantly changing the image to showcase our diverse focus areas and amplify ongoing events.
- To further enhance our brand on LinkedIn, we had an internal drive for our researchers and scientists to update their LinkedIn profiles, helping us build a holistic organic LinkedIn presence.
- We also empowered our scientists and researchers through LinkedIn workshops that helped them unleash the power of social media and build their own personal brands.
- We created a growing online community on LinkedIn to connect, share updates and learn about the latest advances in science and technology.
Results recorded below were achieved completely organically. These are for the duration of Jan 2022 to Dec 2022:
Our effective LinkedIn Strategy:
- Has changed the way Scientific communications is marketed.
- It made complex science and technology topics/themes more accessible and understandable to a non-scientific audience.
- Treated each asset uniquely, and a storyboard was developed to highlight its central scientific theme or concept.
- Highlighted the impact of TCS Research’s work in the world.
- Helped us effectively use LinkedIn's native tools to establish our unique brand voice.
- Organic social media proved to be a journey of exploration and experimentation to figure out what worked best on LinkedIn and there was immense learning throughout.
- The strategy helped increased brand awareness, drive thought leadership, expand and foster our online scientific community, and improve engagement:
- A 330% increase in followers on our LinkedIn page (Around 12000 to 40312)
- 7.6 million impressions for our content on LinkedIn
- 0.45 million engagements
- An avg engagement rate of 6%
- 12000+ custom link clicks on our LinkedIn posts
- 500+ mentions of TCS Research on LinkedIn
- Our strategy has helped us effectively stand out on LinkedIn, a hard act for a B2B business.
- With this new take on Scientific Communications using LinkedIn as a platform, we seek to inspire future inventors.
- We continue to see ongoing growth of our LinkedIn page, progress in LinkedIn goals, and increased audience interest in our new messaging.
