Why & How to Curate a #RoCur

Don't know what a #RoCur is? Check out my previous post: What is a #RoCur

I recently curated both @RealScientists and @IAmSciComm (see recaps here and here). I didn't mean to book them back to back and I also more or less signed up for them later in the spring but they asked me to curate earlier and I was a sucker for not saying no. Curating isn't exactly an easy job, it does take some time and effort but it's well worth it.

Reasons to curate a RoCur:

• It's a short commitment, typically only one week
• Opportunity to reach a wider audience
• Follower counts for @RealScientists: 83.4K followers
• Follower counts for @IAmSciComm: 25.1K followers
• Follower counts for @Biotweeps: 20.4K followers
• Follower counts for @Neurotweeps: 3153 (oh geez, why is this so low?!)
• It's a great way to practice your scicomm skills 
• Get feedback from a different audience
• Increase followers on your personal account

How to curate a RoCur:

• Get over thinking you're not "good enough" to curate because you are - that's just impostor syndrome talking.
• Sign up to curate! Commit! Commit! Commit!
• Promote your curation on your own personal twitter account.

Okay all, I'm signing off my personal account for the week to curate for @realscientists. Come follow me on over there to learn about mitochondria and whatever else I end up rambling about. #SciComm #RoCur pic.twitter.com/wopd3gGvlS

— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) January 19, 2020

• Change the profile photo to you and other details to you (varies depending on the rocur).
• Introduce yourself! Who are you? What do you do? How did you get to your current position?What are you working on? Do you have other hobbies? What does a day in your life look like?
• Share! Do you have relevant links or articles to share? Share links your publications, blog posts, etc.
• Use photos, memes and gifs. Tweets with media have been shown to get 3x as much interaction!
• Use hashtags. Hashtags increase exposure and potential for interaction. Many events and discussions have associated hashtags. Use trending hashtags like #scicomm #PhDChat
• Interact! Respond to people's responses. RT people's responses.
• Ask the audience questions. Try a poll!

Right now for my blog (& my twitter) I'm leaning towards of mix of both mitochondrial biology (the field I study) & my experiences as a PhD student #PhDLife This leads me to the question: Do you think #SciComm should be only science or also showcase scientists as regular people?

— I Am SciComm - Dr. Alexis Willett (@iamscicomm) February 1, 2020

• You don't have to tweet 24/7 but being present on the account is best for interaction. But you can also schedule using TweetDeck.
• When it's time to sign off thank them for a great time & redirect them to your personal account if they want more.

P.S. You can be simultaneously signed in to multiple Twitter accounts now both on the app and on a desktop.

P.P.S. Please sign up for @Neurotweeps if you're in neuro because that's the RoCur I run and getting curators is super difficult! To sign up email neurotweeps (at) gmail (dot) com