Over the last few months, Kristin and I have been working with the great teams at both Firestorm Solutions and Hootsuite to integrate some of the research we have been doing using both situational qsort methodology as well as value modeling. As part of this project, Kristin and I have been able to talk about how this research and insights pertaining to crisis message strategy can be included and used in social media.

There will be a series of blog posts that will be featured on Hootsuite, and the first one was one I wrote focusing on providing an overview of what we have done and what are some of the benefits to these two methodologies. This has been a great and fun collaboration to work with both of these great teams for these amazing organizations.

Kristin and I firmly believe in the concept of paper to practice – where we are taking what we have done in our research and studies and be able to apply it to various situations for businesses, organizations, and agencies. We find also working across disciplines to explore different perspectives and apply new methodologies into specialized industries and fields comes extending the current foundation of scholarly work and applied principles.

How can professors translate their research to practice? There are many ways that this can be accomplished for both professors as well as graduate students:

  • Be willing to share your perspectives online: Writing blog posts about your research opens the door to others looking at what you have done and start the conversation and brainstorming process. You will be getting a different perspective of your work compared to a conference scene.
  • Go to conferences where there are both researchers AND practitioners: I love academic conferences, but I really love ones where you are able to get both sides of the coin for the field. Submit your work to conferences like this (highly recommend the annual Reputation Institute Conference as well as the ICRC Crisis Communications Conference). It was at the ICRC Conference where this idea of this collaborative research effort came about!
  • Network, chat, and discuss your research outside of academia: There are a lot of what I call “Academese” out there. Yes, it is important to know the major components of this theory or the statistical power and value of this measure. However, are you able to communicate these concepts in a way that can be applied and a stepping point for a creative discussion? Practicing this by writing in a different voice may be helpful.

We find with this collaboration with Hootsuite and Firestorm Solutions is a wonderful professional opportunity and I am very excited to be part of this project!

Hope you all are having a great day!

Best Wishes,
Karen