It can be really tricky to get started in science communication. To find the right tools and resources to help your scicomm confidence grow. To work out whether this type of science communication is right for you. Or indeed, whether science communication is for you at all.
I know because I’ve been there. Back when I discovered science communication was a career possibility, I wanted to learn more. I was eager to find useful tools, resources or training sessions that were in my PhD student budget – so basically they needed to be free – and could help me grow in confidence hopefully.
5 years on I am still doing science communication. In fact, it is my full time job now as well as my passion project. I’ve taken on more and more projects and learnt more and more skills. Most of it was learnt by trial and error. But along the way I have picked up some tools that have helped me to find a good routine for balancing my scicomm around full time study, or now around my full time job that I wanted to share with you. These are the tools that have helped me go from a scicomm newbie to a scicomm pro and grow in self belief and confidence along the way. These are the types of tools you need in your scicomm toolkit that will make getting started and blossoming in the world of science communication easier.
This post was originally a podcast episode. You can listen here or continue reading below. Find out all you need to know about my podcast, The SciComm Toolkit, here, and browse other episode topics here.
The tool to support with graphic design
For me, this tool is Canva. I think I use it every single day.
Canva is a website, or there is an app version too, that you can use to create all your social media graphics. You can create YouTube thumbnails, podcast art, media kits, CVs, blog post headers. There are over 250,000 different templates for pretty much anything you might need which is fabulous – and yes that is on the free version! You can make channel art or posters or Instagram Reel templates, logos, brochures, presentation slides, certificates, invitations.
It is so good that I cannot believe it is free. It’s a really really simple and easy to use way of getting some graphic design type support when you are starting off doing some science communication. You can set brand colours, there are hundreds of thousands of customisable assets like frames, graphs, images, stock photos, you can upload your own images, you can also animate things now too. You can invite people into a team and collaborate on documents and up to 5Gb of Cloud storage. Any of the graphics you see on my Instagram account or my blog or website, they have all been made using Canva, even the art for this podcast was made using Canva. It is so so easy to use and it is completely free. Which still blows my mind.
Other alternatives: Adobe Spark (but honestly, you won’t need anything else other than Canva)
The tool to build your website or blog
Every scientist or science communicator needs a website, or a blog if you are going to do some written science communication. The why and how of that I will leave for another time. But in your scicomm toolkit for getting started you need a tool that will help you build that online presence.
For me, that tool is WordPress.
WordPress is web publishing software or site that you can use to create a website or blog. I think it is the easiest and most flexible blogging and content management system for beginners.
In the podcast episode, I mentioned that I would add a link to explain what a content management system is. Find that here. Also, I believe I said Wix wasn’t a content management system – which isn’t correct. BUT having used both WordPress is much more user-friendly, especially if you are going to need lots of different pages on your site.
Getting my blog off the ground was super easy. I made an account and chose a theme. I wrote my first blog and hit publish. I had stats that I could view. I could also download the app to make any edits. All on the free plan. If you need to learn how to customise layouts or add widgets for Instagram or change your site menu, there are thousands of useful blogs and YouTube videos, but it is really easy to use.
My website is still built on WordPress but I now pay for it and I use WordPress.org. There are some key differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, which this post can help you out with more. But for getting started for free, WordPress.com is perfect, and you can move your website to a new host at a later date if you need.
Recommendation: One thing I highly recommend doing though, if and when you can, is buying your domain name. That is the URL of your website. For me, that meant my site went from sophtalksscience.wordpress.com to sophtalksscience.com. It’s pretty affordable at about £14 per year I think. So, if you are able to secure your domain name, do that!
Other alternatives: SquareSpace, Wix or Google Sites
The tool for social media scheduling
One of the most common things I hear from wannabe science communicators is I can’t do it right now, because I don’t have time. Trust me – I get that! BUT this tool is going to be a game changer. With a scheduling tool, you can spend a block of time scheduling tweets or Instagram posts promoting your scicomm project and then not worry about it until your next scheduling session. I promise it saves you time in the long run.
For me, this tool is Later.
On the free version, later allows you to post up to 30 posts on each social media platform in your social set. And a social set is an Instagram account, a Twitter, a Facebook and a Pintrest profile. With Later, you can schedule photos and videos with just a few clicks. You can also plan your content in a visual way for how it might look on your Instagram grid if that is your bag.
There are paid versions which give you a range of extra features, and for full transparency – this is something I will be looking into investing in once I’ve gotten my content creation and scheduling routine back – because I have been terrible recently.
Other alternatives: Buffer, Hootsuite, Facebook Creator Studio or Oktopost
The tool for managing tasks and projects
So much of science communication is about planning and project management. That is why, in my humble opinion, having a project management tool is key when starting out to stay on top of all your projects and tasks, especially as they build and grow.
The tool I use for this is Asana.
I love this tool so much that I use it to manage pretty much my entire life now. You can set up different boards. I have one for my day job, one for the blog, one for the podcast, one for personal development and so on. Within each board, you can set tasks , give them a deadline and assign them to people if you need. You can then break down each of those tasks into subtasks and give each of them a deadline so you can stay on track with your project timeline.
Do this for all your tasks in all your projects and you can then have a list of all your tasks, and it tells you which you need to get done today, tomorrow, next week and so on. You can set recurring tasks if there is something you need to do on the first day of every month for example. You can add documents and images to tasks too. This is a crucial tool to add to your scicomm toolkit.
Other alternatives: Trello (which I also love) and Notion
If you would love to see a tutorial on how I use Asana then let me know in the comments of this post!
The tool to support your writing
No matter what type of science communication you do, there will be a written element.
The tool I use for this is Grammarly.
Grammarly is a free online writing assistant that helps check for any grammatical and spelling mistakes in what you have written. Just copy and paste it across and it will give you suggestions. There is also a browser extension you can add which will then work for anything you write online. Something I am very grateful for as it checks emails as I am writing them. The last thing I want when I am sending out a pitch email is for there to be spelling mistakes as I want to look like I can string a sentence together.
It is a really simple tool, but a really useful tool to help you with anything you need to write for your science communication projects.
The tool for recording remote interviews
Okay – so this one might not be a must-need in your science communication toolkit, but it is a really handy one to have.
This tool for me is Zencastr.
With this tool, you invite your guest into what is basically an audio room. Hit record and an audio track will be recorded at your end, and another track at their end so you can get the most crystal clear audio that you can. I have been using it to record remote podcast interviews, but if you are doing interviews for a news article, or research for a book proposal, it would work brilliantly for that too. All you need to do then is transcribe what was said.
Bonus tool for transcriptions: Otter.ai
Other alternatives: Zoom, Skype or Squadcast
The tool for inspiring content ideas
Another of the most common things that come up in science communication is ‘what do I talk about’, or ‘what do I write about’. Well, if you are stuck for content ideas then you will love this suggestion.
A fantastic tool to help you with this is AnswerThePublic.com
Head to the website and type in a keyword or phrase related to your scicomm project and science communication goals. It then gives you hundreds of the most popular questions and phrases that people are searching for related to your topic.
You can only do two searches a day! But it is such a valuable tool to help inspire YouTube video ideas, what to include in your next public science talk or what activities to create for your upcoming science festival. Download all these ideas and add them to your content ideas planner. And if you don’t have one of those – make sure that is another tool you add to your scicomm toolkit. Maybe you can set one up on your new project management tool 😛
There are heaps of other ways I can recommend to look for content ideas, so if you want more where this one came from, let me know in the comments below
When you are getting started in science communication, get these tools set up. I assure you it will make getting started easier and your confidence will grow. If you have been doing science communication for a little while and don’t have these tools, then it is not too late to set them up.
From all the tools I have tried out over the past 5 years, these are my favourites. They are the ones I still use. But go and experiment with the alternatives. Spend some time working out which ones are best for you but I seriously recommend having a tool from each of these sections in your scicomm toolkit.
If you found this useful, then check out my podcast the SciComm Toolkit that share tips and tricks to help you bring science stories to life. Or browse around the blog to see what else you can learn.