SOCIAL COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT LAB
CONTEXT:
In January 2017, the Social Cognitive Development Lab* (now called Liberman Child Studies Lab) at UC Santa Barbara was established. The psychology studies in the lab focus on how infants and children form expectations about social relationships and social groups. I became a research assistant for the lab by first being a weekly volunteer and then taking the lead on launching the lab’s brand new Instagram and Facebook page. By working alongside the Assistant Professor Zoe Liberman, within the year and a half of the lab launching, we established a name for ourselves, being able to recruit families to participate in our lab studies and studies conducted at MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation and Santa Barbara Zoo.
CHALLENGE:
Since the lab just opened in January 2017, there were two main issues. First, the lab was starting everything from scratch, including its social media presence. The second was that in order to have these psychology studies be successful, you need participants. Since the primary participants of our studies were infants and children, we needed parental consent in order to have the child do the study. That is difficult to obtain when there wasn’t a way to prove to parents and legal guardians that we are a university-funded psychology lab except for the .edu website.
SOLUTION:
Since we were primarily targeting parents since our subjects are too young to use social media, we decided to create a Facebook business page and an Instagram account. Most parents tend to flock to these two sites so this was the starting point. For both, we decided to go the mostly organic route of posting consistently on social media about current research in our field or what’s currently going on the lab and/or with our PI (Principal Investigator) Zoe Liberman. This, tied in with the old fashion flyers and word-of-mouth help established our presence in Santa Barbara county.
By January 2018, one year later, we were holding psychological studies in our lab and also at two other secondary locations: MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation and the Santa Barbara Zoo. As time went on, it was easier to recruit more children into participating in our studies especially since we can now keep people updated about our research through social media.
RESULTS:
Gained over 200 followers on the lab’s Facebook business page within its first year through weekly scheduled posts about current research in our field
Generated over 100 new leads for our studies through a Facebook ad campaign, by tailoring ad parameters to target market demographics
Achieved a 14% engagement rate on Instagram within 3 months of launch by producing behind the scenes content about the lab and its research assistants
