Communicating your work is an important part of academic research, and Imperial has several teams that communicate research outcomes to public, the media, and specialist audiences such as businesses and policymakers.

If you’re running a major research project and impact is a priority, you may find it beneficial to have access to your own dedicated communications resource provided by the Research Impact Management Office (RIMO).

The team’s communications professionals will work closely with you to build a communications and dissemination strategy at the outset of the project, and implement it throughout the project’s lifespan. This typically includes building a web presence, creating social media and editorial content, organising public events, providing engagement training and evaluation. This support is only available for projects managed by RIMO.

How RIMO can help support your project’s communications

• Create your strategy. RIMO can help you draw up a dissemination and communication strategy. This includes defining key messages, audiences, and communication channels, as well as measurements of success.
• Online presence. RIMO can lead on the development and management of project branding, websites and social media channels over the course of your project, including the creation of content such as articles, videos and podcasts.
• Press. RIMO can help you work with Imperial’s and consortium partners’ press teams to maximise coverage of newsworthy results.
• Events. Sometimes the best way to engage with the public is face to face. RIMO can plan public engagement events, develop tailored activities, manage the logistics, advertise and promote them, and support you and your team on the day. (See for example the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition that we managed for SONICOM.)
• Training. There’s no better messenger for research than the people that carried it out. RIMO can provide communication and engagement training for you, your team, and other consortium members to help you be the strongest voice for your own research.
• Evaluation. It’s important to measure the effectiveness of communications initiatives. RIMO can help you set key performance indicators (KPIs), measure online metrics, and measure the effectiveness of events through feedback forms and evaluation reports.

The benefits of communication and engagement

Communicating your research can bring many benefits to you, your partners and your research.

Engaging with members of the public increases awareness of your research area, whilst allowing you to gain insights that you may not have considered. You can also hear directly from those who may be affected by your research.

The RIMO team has heard first-hand from academics that taking part in engagement events has made them think about their research in new ways and enhanced their communication skills more broadly – something that early-career academics find particularly attractive.

Raising your and your project’s public profile can also directly lead to new opportunities to promote your research to the audiences that you want to reach.

And importantly, funders are ever-increasingly putting more value on communication and engagement. Actively promoting your research in this way looks favourable to funders both during a project’s lifetime, as well as when applying for future funding.