How to maximize the impact of your work: a practical guide for orthopedic researchers and clinicians
BY AO MARKETING TEAM
This article explores various self-promotion strategies you can employ to promote your work with greater effect and to ensure that news about your work reaches as many people as possible within the orthopedic community and beyond. Explore social media strategies, channels such as guest blogs and podcasts, and networking to grow your citation rates and impact. AO will help, but it cannot be reiterated enough that the most powerful tool for promoting your articles, your courses, and your work is always you!
Disclaimer: The article represents the opinion of individual authors exclusively and not necessarily the opinion of AO or its clinical divisions.
Publishing an article under your name in an eminent journal is a significant professional achievement for anyone in the medical profession or in scientific research. Likewise, overcoming an especially taxing challenge in the operating theatre, or being invited to speak at a prestigious congress, will be major career highlights. If you have achieved any of the examples, many congratulations!
However—and this may come as a surprise—outstanding achievements are merely a waypoint on your journey and not the point to sit back and relax. In fact, reaching a professional milestone is always a starting point for an entirely new task. We in marketing will argue that making sure your efforts receive the attention they deserve is as important as the outcome itself. After all, you want the results of your hard work to be noticed, referenced, and translated into practice. Your research, your professional achievements, or your conference appearances should be visible, widely read, and impactful—otherwise, why go to the trouble at all?
Leveraging social media to grow your audience
It is almost too obvious to mention, but social media platforms such as LinkedIn, X (twitter), Facebook, and Instagram provide a particularly powerful means of broadcasting your achievements directly to your professional and personal networks and finding new audiences. Not only are those who know you personally in a professional or a private context more likely to take an interest in your activities. They are also potential promoters of your work if they share it with their own social media contacts.
Make it relevant and grab attention
If you decide to post about your work, always ensure that you include a link to your publication or event. Having said that, simply sharing a link without any additional context does not make for a very interesting post. You can catch people's attention by emphasizing the significance of what you have achieved. For instance, highlight the real-world impact your research results will have on surgeons and patients, the clinical application, or discuss a particularly challenging case you have encountered in your own practice. Photos, images, infographics, or short videos will make your posts more appealing.
Keep your posts personal and leave in the taste of life. Unpolished behind-the-scenes posts can be much more attractive than highly professional posts. A smiling face looking you in the eyes will always grab attention.
Use tags and start conversations
You can further increase your visibility by tagging co-authors, as well as colleagues and institutions involved, such as publishers, journals, or societies like us. Encouraging them to share your content or including questions to start a conversation is a great way to increase your impact.
The same applies to social media profiles of the journal or congress where your work has appeared—any mention of your work there, whether in the shape of an original post or a re-post of your content, will benefit your work's visibility. Scientific journals, such as the AO’s Global Spine Journal and CMTR, often feature new articles on their own proprietary social media channels and yours could be included. Make sure you engage with their posts and tag anyone else that could be interested.
If you don't care, why should anyone else?
Join groups and engage
Many social networking platforms—including LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, or AO’s own myAO—feature specialist groups, channels, or communities dedicated to subjects such as orthopedics, traumatology, or research. Joining these expert groups enables you to start discussions and share your achievements with an already interested audience. If you regularly engage with posts by others, ask questions, or offer insights, you will become a trusted and valued member of these communities. This in turn will boost your visibility and position you as an active and engaged professional in your field.
Connect with influencers
Chances are that eminent figures from your area of expertise maintain social media profiles to interact with colleagues. Some will have established themselves as what has widely become known in the digital realm as 'influencers'. Connect with the key influencers in the world of orthopedics and share your achievements with them! You can send them a personal message explaining its importance and kindly ask them to share with their followers.
Just like in the fashion and music industries, influencers can significantly extend your reach and lend credibility to your achievements.
Blogging your way to recognition
Writing about your achievements in the form of blog posts is another powerful way of reaching beyond your immediate bubble, especially if they appear on the website of trusted publishers, a journal, or a nonprofit organization such as the AO (just like this text you are reading). Blogs tend to be less time sensitive (social media posts are often consumed in the moment) and can reach wide audiences. Often other interesting content is available only to subscribers or behind a paywall.
A blog post is open to anyone who undertakes research, asks a question, or makes a keyword search online around your topic. This literally makes it possible to reach researchers and practitioners around the world, from the orthopedic sector as well as related fields, and can lead to potential collaborations. Another advantage is that blogging allows you to explain your work in more general terms, making it more accessible to the public, as well as patients and caregivers with an interest in the latest advancements.
For maximum impact, you should add personal insights and discuss the implications of your work, not just list your key results and main takeaways. You can use deep dives and case studies to illustrate the context, findings, and implications of your work. You can highlight a specific case related to your research or from your clinical practice to bring your topic to life, to detail the challenges, your approach, and the outcomes. Or if there is a story behind—as there always is—elaborate how your project came to life by discussing your sources of inspiration, existing knowledge gaps, current controversies, or breakthroughs achieved.
Another exciting idea is to add more color to your blog post by collaborating with colleagues or other experts, especially if they had a role in enhancing your work. You could interview or profile co-authors, colleagues, or mentors, highlighting your joint efforts and their impact.
Harnessing the power of podcasts
Podcasts are a very versatile and ever more popular format to share insights and professional accomplishments as well as personal stories in an informal yet engaging setting. Among their greatest assets is their accessibility: listeners can absorb valuable content while engaged in everyday chores such as cooking, commuting, or training. Podcasts are impactful over a long period of time and not used up in the moment like social media, so titles should be discussed in a way that your recording is valid at least for several months or a year.
Podcasts allow you to highlight several aspects of your work and explain its implications. They work best as a discussion or debate between two or more hosts. If you cast around, you will find podcasts dedicated to orthopedics and your field of expertise. It may well be worth contacting a host to see whether you can appear as a guest.
A more ambitious, though not an unrealistic prospect is to start your own podcast, maybe with a group of likeminded professionals or a group you are already a member of. From a technical point of view, the production and dissemination of audio content has become relatively simple. Good quality recording equipment and editing software is quite affordable and you can generate good quality audio results without excessive effort.
Consistency is key to building an audience—the most effective and successful podcasts release new episodes on a regular basis and have a clear and specific topical frame. Setting out some central goals as well as drawing up a content plan can help you move things along in the beginning. Think about the guests you want to feature. Co-authors or research partners are ideal, because your listeners will benefit from an engaging conversation between close colleagues about a topic you are both well-versed in and have previously collaborated on and use the networking opportunities at events to build meaningful connections and invite them to your show.
Build yourself up as an authority
When you do online research, the search engines and algorithms will try to show you the most relevant and valuable content, what they think you are looking for. How exactly they assess the quality of content is not known, but they will use for example links from known authorities directing to your page as an indicator. Being able to generate high-quality links that direct to your research will increase traffic, enhance your visibility, and improve your rankings when people are looking for content related to your topic.
Successful link building from renowned other websites requires patience and good contacts. Your content must be consistently high quality so that others will want to reference and link to it. Publishing outstanding research, making available in-depth resources that others from your field can use, or posting other useful content such as infographics, charts, or videos that are easy to share are all strategies that will work to your advantage.
Promoting your scientific articles is mutually beneficial for the authors, journal, editors, and society, and the free academic promotional websites such as ORCID, KUDOS, Web of Science and ResearchGate are there to help promote published works. If you want to see your article promoted on the publisher’s channels, social media, newsletters, or blogs, you can always reach out to the journal office and ask them.
If you follow the tips in this article, chances are that you will automatically boost your authority and generate links to your work as you go along. Guest blogging for respected blogs or websites in your field, collaborations with other researchers or institutions, or sharing your work on social media all increase the likelihood that others will be cross-linking your content.
You may want to start closest to home and simply ask colleagues to mention your work whenever relevant and return the favor and do the same for them.
Embrace in-person networking and word of mouth
Another avenue to explore in terms of self-promotion are informal networks of friends, colleagues, former classmates, and acquaintances—word of mouth is something that should not be underestimated and you can probably easily relate to this from experience. Don't be shy to bring up your achievements in everyday conversations, casual or professional. Conveying your excitement and the significance of your work in a personal conversation can spark interest and lead to broader sharing.
Likewise, informal gatherings in a work context such as departmental meetings, communal lunch breaks, or happy hours sometimes foster more meaningful exchanges than formal settings. Networking events and social gatherings within your field yield good opportunities to share your achievements and connect with others who might help promote your work.
In addition, think about any contacts you may have from your time at college and university or your membership in a professional organization. Alumni networks often feature the current-day activities of former students via newsletters, websites, and social media and may be happy to publish your updates. Likewise, professional societies dedicated to your field may be interested in publicizing your achievements through their communications channels.
Some general tips to make it real
When writing for the public or posting about your work, it is best to place emphasis on relaying to your readers what difference your work will make in the real world, why it matters to patients and clinicians. Anyone with a deeper interest will be able to find details on their own or you can direct them by providing links. Columns of numbers and statistics do not make for engaging reading, especially when your target audience may include laypeople and patients.
Another thing to keep in mind is continuous cross-referencing. For instance, if you have published a blog post, why not promote it via your social media channels, and, while you are at it, tag relevant colleagues and institutions to encourage sharing? Speaking engagements at conferences, lectures, seminars, or webinars are ideal occasions to mention your blog or your podcast, and to invite those in the audience to keep in touch via Facebook or LinkedIn. Keep going on like this. You may feel you are repeating yourself, but the audience is likely to see or hear only one instance of your activities.
It may take a little extra effort to get started, but once you leverage any of the methods outlined above, you can significantly enhance the reach and impact of your scientific research and professional achievements. Personal connections have a ripple effect and help spread the word to a wider and more diverse audience than formal channels alone.
So, why not take the first step and do it! Draft that first social media post right now or submit a Guest Blog idea to the AO. Your post could be the next article featured on this channel, exactly like this text which you are just about to finish reading.
Good luck from all of us here at AO Marketing!
You might also be interested in:
AO Guest Blogs are available for AO Trauma, AO Spine, AO CMF, and AO VET. Selected articles are published for AO Recon, AO Sports, and AO Access.
Find out more about the official journals of AO Spine and AO CMF—the Global Spine Journal and the CMTR journal—and submit your research for publication.
Join our leading congresses, the AO Spine's annual Global Spine Congress or the biannual FACE AHEAD of AO CMF, submit your abstracts and present your work to a global audience.