Social Media
Tips and Tricks

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Last updated: June 23, 2025

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Best Practices:

Check that you have been transparent

• “I’m a scientist @FredHutch. Opinions are my own, reposts aren’t endorsements.”

Check that you have cited and/or tagged sources and people

Check that you are not violating patient or intellectual privacy

Check if you are using a tone that might be lost in translation

Check that you have added a creative element

• Use stories, anecdotes, images, videos, art, GIFs, poetry, cartoons, memes
• Be cautious about jokes or memes - may not target right audience - going viral isn’t automatically good

Check that necessary people have reviewed the content

If you are unsure, don’t post it!

Content to Share:

• Walk through how to do specific tasks with your software
• Recruit new users and contributors
• Report releases, new features, papers etc.
• Describe your work & your colleagues’ work
• Advertise learning opportunities & work opportunities
• Convey thought leadership & measured critiques
• Share anecdotes and images that humanize your work
• Explain concepts to lay audiences

Check if your institute has a Social Media Policy with guidelines or restrictions on the usage of social media.

These tips are adapted from the Marketing and Communications group at Fred Hutch.

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Tools:

• Typefully and Buffer
  • Manage and cross-post to most popular platforms
  • Schedule your content
  • Collect engagement metrics
  • Collaborate with others on content
  • Use AI to help you write content
• RSS feeds and Tiny Tiny RSS
  • Host feeds for free and aggregate and distribute them
• Substack
  • Create blogs or newsletters to update subscribers with embedded tracking of engagement (works with RSS feeds)
• Newsletters on LinkedIn
  • Separate from the organization profile, allows for user subscriptions and engagement with comments and questions

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Tips:

• Efficiency
  • Archive everything so other team members can access and review to help with inspiration and reposting
  • Repurpose posts for different audiences
  • Use Typefully, Buffer, or other tools to post the same content on multiple platforms, and plan and schedule posts in advance
  • Templates can be really useful - helps create professional looking posts quickly
  • LLMs can help write content
• General
  • Review what kinds of posts and post times/channels that seem to get best engagement
  • Be brief and to the point
  • Consistently post
  • Encourage community feedback for tool improvements
  • If people send feedback, you can respond to them individually by email, especially if it becomes a negative conversation
  • Let ITN know about your blogs, feeds, handles etc. so we can help you connect with people!

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Great Examples:

• NHGRI Twitter feed with great memes:

https://x.com/genome_gov

• Galaxy Social media archive:

https://github.com/usegalaxy-eu/galaxy-social

• Cancer Genomics Consortium LinkedIn with effective use of templates:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cancer-genomics-consortium

ITN Social Media Handles:

• LinkedIn: itcr-training-network
• YouTube: @itcrtrainingnetwork2281
• Podcast: Cracking the cancer code
• Bluesky: @itcrtraining
• X: @itcrtraining

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What platforms are ITCR participants using?

(75 responses - 35 participants)

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Authors: This cheatsheet is the product of discussions from the ITCR OPEN Group with panelists Ino de Bruijn, Tali Mazor, and Jeremy Goecks, with additional contributions from other ITCR participants including Obi Griffith, Greg Caporaso, Jeff Leek, and others. It was summarized by Carrie Wright and includes best practices from the Fred Hutch Social Media Group.