Be a Visible Expert with Dr Lily Rosewater of Pitch Science

Science communicator and website designer, Dr. Lily Rosewater, shares why you should have more visibility as a researcher.

Dr Lily Rosewater designs websites, brand assets, and has a service for social media on demand at her company, Pitch Science. I knew she’d be a great expert to share with you. She joins me live from Australia to talk about what it means to be a visible expert for scientists and researchers.

Lily is an expert for scientist websites, social media, and branding through her company, Pitch Science. What about you? What would it mean to be more visible as an expert yourself? We talk about how many academics are known in their communities, but hidden online. Are you one of the HiddenExperts™? Whether it’s been intentional for you or not, you may want people to find you and your research online. Lily can help you too.

Meet Lily Rosewater

[Jennifer van Alstyne:] All right everyone, this is my first time using this platform for the interview. I’m excited to be here with Dr. Lily Rosewater, a website designer, science communicator. I feel you do a lot of things in the sense that you support your clients in a lot of ways. Lily, would you mind introducing yourself for people?

[Dr. Lily Rosewater:] Of course. Like you said, I am a science communicator, that’s kind of covering all of my services, I guess as a whole. I was a neuroscientist in my past life and I realized while I was in the lab that most people weren’t really communicating with the public efficiently, and so I left academia. And now, like you said, I design websites for academics and research institutes. And I also do science communications, so science content. I run training sessions to help researchers communicate better with the public. I do kind of all manner of forms of science communication, really anything that’s going to help people better share their work with the world and kind of make that bigger impact.

You’re already an expert, you deserve to take up space

[Jennifer:] I feel like that’s something that sometimes people don’t recognize that is capable for themselves and that imposter syndrome or that feeling of like, ‘I’m not there yet,’ can hold people back.

Is there a message you have for scientists and other people who are in academia who are feeling that way who deserve that space online?

[Lily:] Oh, definitely. And I see this a lot when I talk, especially to early career researchers, PhD students are always like, “Well, I’m not a PI, I’m not a senior researcher yet. Therefore, I don’t deserve to take up that space online. But by the time you’ve kind of made it into research, you are already an expert and you do deserve to take up that space, and it’s really hard to work through that imposter syndrome. I know. I have done it myself, and everyone I work with does it. It’s so universal.

But I think at the end of the day, people who are not experts often feel plenty of, they’re more than happy to take up that space online and often share misinformation. So actually what we do need are the people who have that experience and that expertise coming in. And whether that’s a PhD student, a postdoc, a professor, we need people across kind of the academic spectrum with a variety of experiences and voices to kind of fill that void. And so even if you kind of feel a bit imposter syndrome-y, I get it, but you are so sorely needed and there is definitely a place for you.

Becoming a visible expert online

[Jennifer:] Can I ask, what do you love about that transformation of bringing someone from being maybe a hidden expert to what you call a visible expert?

[Lily:] Yeah, so I kind of developed this Hidden Expert to Visible Expert pipeline essentially to help people kind of understand it. Because whether you kind of want to acknowledge it or not, when you’re in academia, you are an expert in your field. And when you solely publish papers without doing online outreach for the bulk of the population, you are a hidden expert. You are not someone that they can look to for expertise and advice and knowledge because most people are not having Google Scholar alerts set up to find your research or have the ability to get through paywalls. Not everyone knows about Sci-Hub.

When people really invest the time to transform themselves from a hidden expert to a visible expert, making it so that their work is available to the public in a form that is understandable and jargon free and all that good stuff, they often feel so much more confidence in themselves, even in their science, then they get kind of a new way of understanding their work because they have to really think and reframe their own science in terms of how it impacts others.

[Jennifer:] That’s one of the things that I noticed on your website. You talk about the reasons why people do this and it’s really to create change, change for their research, change for the world.

[Lily:] Yeah.

[Jennifer:] What does that change mean for your clients and the people you work with?

[Lily:] So it can mean a variety of things. It does depend on kind of what their goals are. But it might even just be if, I work particularly in the life sciences, it might be reaching people with lived experience. So for example, in my past life I worked in multiple sclerosis and concussion. My husband now has multiple sclerosis quite ironically. And being able to communicate and share that kind of knowledge that I had from my PhD with him, when we kind of went through that process and he got that diagnosis, it was life changing for him to actually have access to that knowledge.

And so on an interpersonal and kind of individual level, when you share your research openly and that knowledge and expertise, you are going to reach people who have a real vested interest, and it’s going to really change their lives because you are empowering them with knowledge on a bigger scale. Though obviously it can also impact policy, ’cause obviously you’re far more likely to be found by policy makers. It can even help with funding decisions if you know you’re able to really demonstrate impact and, if it boosts your Altmetric scores, you have a way of kind of demonstrating the public engagement. It can really drive kind of more societal level conversations. So it really depends on your goals.

Branding for your academic website

[Jennifer:] I really appreciate that. And yeah, I feel like every person that I’ve worked with has had their own unique goals and oftentimes goals they didn’t even recognize when they started the project. I love that you really support people with not just the website creation, but really the whole branding process, choosing colors, sometimes logo design.

I guess I didn’t ask this question in advance, but is there something different about working with someone who is open to that dream for themselves about like the visual branding elements than just say, I want a traditional academic website that’s maybe list-y or doesn’t have the same personality as I bring to the table. What’s that like?

[Lily:] I think the people who tend to want that kind of visual identity alongside it, they are the people who in my experience, are the ones that really want to engage with the public so they can see the value in being recognizable, being kind of, if it pops up in someone’s feed for example, they go, “Oh, that’s Dr. So-and-so, or that’s that lab,” and having that recognizability and memorability versus I think more traditional academic websites, which are a bit more like sharing your work with the world, but not necessarily doing active outreach at the same time. And so it’s the people who really want to, yeah, reach out to people and be seen and noticed versus having an online hub that kind of stores everything.

[Jennifer:] I love that you said that because I feel like there’s this bias or stereotype that the people who want the visual branding elements are maybe a little bit more self-centered or narcissistic, and that’s so far from the truth. So I love that you said it’s actually really about other people and creating that change.

[Lily:] A hundred percent. And I think there’s this misconception anyway with personal branding, that it is narcissistic or it’s icky or it’s smug, whatever else, right? I, I do a lot of work, especially in my training sessions, trying to reframe it as a self-portrait and it’s about kind of figuring out how you want to share yourself with the world in a way that feels right to you and as a reflection of you. But that doesn’t make it inherently a bad thing. And having that visual element isn’t really necessarily about the person.

It’s more about, yeah, recognizability. Because ultimately, we all in a way recognize the McDonald’s arches, or when certain people come up on our feeds, we can see from the way the posts are created and the colors they use, you immediately know who it is and it’s basically creating that for your science that people can go, “Oh, I’m, I can see this post and I know I’m about to learn something.”

Training sessions with Pitch Science

[Jennifer:] You brought up that you do workshops and you help train groups. I would love for you to share a little bit about that because that’s not something that I take on very often. And so I feel there’s people who are listening to this that are like, “I want the people around me. I want my department, I want my team to have a stronger online presence, to have that website.” What, what are some ways that they could work with you?

[Lily:] So yeah, I do run these training sessions. I, they’re such a fulfilling part of my work. So I love making content myself and doing the websites, all of the things, I love the hands-on aspect, but I can also recognize that scientists are the true experts of their own work. And so if we can give them the tools and the training to actually share with the public directly and not necessarily go through me, then that’s kind of better for everyone as well. And we get more science communication out of it, which at the end of the day is my goal. Like my goal is to promote science communication, whether done by myself or not.

I run a variety of training sessions. I have some that are more science communication specific, so helping scientists learn how to turn their science into stories. It’s a lot of things like narrative techniques and audience analysis. So really honing in on who you’re speaking to because everyone always goes, “Oh, it’s lay audiences.” That is not necessarily the approach you need to be having ’cause lay people is everyone basically that is not a scientist. That is not an audience. So I help them identify who they are talking to. And so it’s far more science communication focused. And then I have other workshops that are far more based around actual personal branding. And that’s where I really bring in the idea of the self-portrait, helping them pick their paints and their brush strokes, whether that’s their personal brand assets, helping them find the tools and resources to maybe design their own logo or pick their own colors and fonts. And then also the various other places they can share their science, whether that’s their website, social media, engaging with other media like The Conversation, and really just kind of helping them pick things out.

Content creation on demand for academics

[Jennifer:] Okay. So there’s so much power in building the capacity of scientists to do that themselves. I love that. I feel like you and I share that value. That’s why I have so many resources and even this interview series on The Social Academic, but I feel like there’s so many people who are like, “I really just need this done for me.” Right? That’s why a lot of people come to me. I’m sure that’s why people come to you for websites, but you also offer content creation services for scientists.

Would you be open to sharing about that? Because I feel that’s something I definitely don’t offer, and I feel so many people need because they really don’t have the skills to do it themselves and maybe just don’t want to build them or have the capacity to build them right now.

[Lily:] Yeah, definitely. So, and it’s definitely often a capacity thing, or when I work with more research institutes and larger organizations, it’s also to take that off of the researcher’s plates because oftentimes they kind of expect researchers to do it, but there’s not really a career payback, that’s not really valued in promotions, for example. So it’s disadvantaging the researchers who do it. Basically what I do is people, it’s mostly ad hoc work, although I can work on retainer, but it is people send me their papers. I have a request system in my client portal. So upload their papers, tell me what content they want, whether that’s a bit of social media carousels or a blog post or an email newsletter.

I take that, I take their research, I go away, I spend hours learning everything about their research. I will read that paper, I read papers around it. I learn that kind of specific niche and field, it takes a lot of time. Once I feel confident to accurately portray their research. Because I often say that I operate under the principle of no nonsense science, and that is I will not do academic kind of misconduct or everything has to be very accurate to their papers.

Once I kind of feel confident that I can do that, I then start creating the content. If it’s social media, for example, and I need a graphic and I don’t have the ability to find it on say Canva, I will make it in Illustrator. So I have made so many custom illustrations and yeah, and then I basically just upload it all and then once people are happy, they can kind of take it and use it. So it’s slightly different to your usual social media work, which people often get a bit confused by. I think they’re like, “Oh, I, how is this not a 10 minute job?? You’re just creating social media,” but it is almost like a mini lit review for content.

[Jennifer:] I feel like that is just a strong misconception that not just scientists, but everyone kind of has about social media: “Oh, the intern’s doing it,” or “This is going to take 10 minutes.” But really when I work with groups on their social media, I really try to disillusion that myth. Hmm. Sometimes the best posts take an hour or days. Sometimes people are working on video and like a whole team of people, or if you are a large company, you might be putting a ton of money behind that one social media post. So I don’t like that notion of, we’re limited to that 10 minute scope or we’ve kind of somehow failed in our ability to get it out quickly. I don’t think that’s a value we need when it comes to sharing on social media.

[Lily:] Yeah, definitely. And I think it’s often devalued compared to traditional media. They’re more than happy to put a ton of time and energy behind, maybe a TV spot on the news. But then when it comes to social media, people are a bit more hesitant and they don’t really have that value. But realistically in this day and age, you’re actually far more likely if you do it right to find your audience on social media than you are in a TV news ad when people aren’t really watching TV as much anymore and they have ad free Netflix and all the things, right?

So it’s actually not even about the medium. It’s about meeting people where they’re at and where they’re getting their news and where they’re getting their content. And that is social media now. And so it’s that kind of cognitive shift that needs to happen to really place that value on social media and emails and blogs and that kind of digital content because that’s where people are.

[Jennifer:] Ooh, I appreciate that. And it sounds like you work in a lot of different mediums. You support people in a lot of different written forms. And the design aspect as well.

I’m curious, what is your process for getting started, if someone’s listening to this call, they’re a scientist, they want to work with you, do they go to your website? What’s the next step for them?

[Lily:] Yeah, so go to my website. I have a ton of stuff on there and you can submit an inquiry form. The thing that I kind of am most proud about with my services is that you could be in my system, you could be, technically a client and there could be zero financial outlay until you need a paper. So although I do have the retainers for people who need like a lot of content, I have the ad hoc system, there is no upfront costs, there’s no fee. So you could sit there and never use me. So you can kind of keep me in your back pocket.

Then maybe you have a massive paper that comes out that you’re really proud of and that’s when you could reach out and be like, “Hey, we’re ready. Here’s-” and I have a new paper package that literally has social media, blog, and an email, or a few different things. And you could be, ‘That’s what we’re after, we’ve got this paper,” and they upload it. I go away and I do it, and that’s it. There is no kind of commitment or because I understand that research fluctuates. I’ve been there.

[Jennifer:] Yeah.

[Lily:] I’ve done that. I know that you don’t have a paper every month. And so it’s really easy to kind of work with me because I get it.

[Jennifer:] You said you mainly work with life sciences. Is that kind of the scope of your clients? Are you open to working with other people?

[Lily:] I have worked with other people in the past and my training sessions definitely can go across the sciences. Like I have done training sessions for mineral resources institutes. I did, I was part of their science communication awards last year.

Definitely when it comes to the content creation, I tend to stick to life sciences because that’s my background. And like I said, scientific integrity means everything to me. And if someone were to hand me a physics paper, I don’t think I have the background to actually be able to understand that, digest it and be able to then communicate that. So I do tend to stick within life sciences for content creation just so I can ensure that everything I create is accurate.

[Jennifer:] What about website design? Because I feel like there’s a lot of people who are listening who are like, “Wait, I saw that video that she put out about the amazing website that you created with the logo and everything.” I loved that. And so I feel there’s people who are like, “Can you work with me even though I’m not in life sciences?”

[Lily:] Yeah. That and website design, branding, that’s also absolutely within my wheelhouse, as long as you’re a scientist, I can definitely help. It’s solely content creation where I think, okay, ’cause that has that extra layer of needing to be accurate. Whereas I can understand enough to create you a logo and create your website, but I don’t feel like I’d understand it enough necessarily to then also create in-depth. ‘Cause to be able to communicate science, you have to really deeply understand it.

[Jennifer:] Yeah.

[Lily:] To distill it down. And that’s where it kind of, I try to limit to life science. But yeah, anything else in my kind of wheelhouse, definitely.

[Lily:] Then I also, I forgot to mention I have an online community.

[Jennifer:] You do?

[Lily:] Yes. And so if you kind of don’t want that one-on-one help, then, I mean, I literally launched it a few weeks ago.

[Jennifer:] Congratulations!

[Lily:] Thank you. If you join, that gives opportunities and resources and it also has an option to share your content that you’re creating for feedback from me and the rest of the community. So, and that’s free at the moment. And if you join now, it will always be free.

[Jennifer:] Oh, that sounds really supportive. Oh, I can’t wait. I’m going to, after this goes out, I’m going to make a blog post version and I’m going to include links and for anyone who’s watching this live, the description will eventually have all of these links and everything. So save this video and come back. But I wanted to highlight this community because I feel like that’s not something, that’s definitely not something that I offer and it’s not something that is within my capacity. So if you’re looking for group feedback and community support when it comes to sharing online, sharing your research, being a scientist who wants an online presence, Lily has a space for you. And that sounds amazing.

[Lily:] Yeah. It’s already growing. Like I’m so happy with it and everyone there is so happy to be there.

[Jennifer:] Yay!

[Lily:] I think that’s, it’s got the real potential to give people that extra support in a way that I can’t necessarily do one-on-one with everyone. And you’ll understand this, there is a limit to how much we can do one-on-one with people just from time, if nothing else. As well as people’s budgets. If you’re a PhD student, you might not have the budget on your kind of salary or scholarship to work with someone one-on-one. And the goal of the community is to kind of fill that gap where even if you’re DIYing it, you still have that support. I’m in there literally every day. There’s even community networking. People get matched up with different members of the community to have a chat. There’s online courses in there, there’s all sorts of stuff. So it’s definitely a good place to kind of go if you are in that space of in between, of you need it, but you’re not quite ready to work with someone.

[Jennifer:] Lily, can I ask, how long have you been kind of doing this kind of work?

[Lily:] Ooh, since mid 2022. So I was still in academia, I was still a researcher and I knew I wanted to pivot. I knew I wanted to do science communication. I was actually still doing it on the side as an academic. So I did social media, I did science writing, freelance. I had my own social media accounts that I was growing. But I formally started the business in mid 2022. Towards the end of my PhD, I had about three or four month overlap, which was quite stressful. But I managed to, I was really lucky. I managed to have my first client and that was that kickstart to make me go, oh, actually this is definitely the step that I want to make. So yeah, and I’ve been doing it ever since. So I guess that’s three and a half years now.

[Jennifer:] That is amazing. I feel like when I first started my business, I was so scared to talk about what I do and that definitely didn’t come quickly to me. But the posts that I see from you on LinkedIn are so open and I feel like really show your personality. I knew that you’d be an amazing person to bring on this show because truthfully, we’re not competitors. Like not, not in real life. Like there’s so many people who need support sharing what they do online. And so, I feel like we need to be friends in the sense that there are more people who need to hear about what you do because they need support and I won’t have the capacity to support them forever.

Like my friend Brittany Trinh, who also designs websites, hosts The Best Personal Academic Websites Contest with me. She went back to grad school, she’s so busy. She hasn’t had time to design scientists websites. More people like us are needed. And I’m so glad you came on this show.

Personal branding as your self-portrait

[Jennifer:] Since you started your business, there have probably been people who came to you that have expressed worries or anxieties or maybe fear about being online. Do you have a message for them or maybe something that you’ve learned in your work since you started?

[Lily:] Yeah, definitely. I think honestly it comes back to the personal branding is a self-portrait thing for me in that you could have a really detailed self-portrait. You could go for hyper-realistic, have a million brushstrokes, use all the paint and have a presence on every platform, right? But that doesn’t mean you have to do that. You could also have a really abstract self-portrait. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be on every platform or doing all the things. If you had a website, you’ve got a brush stroke on your canvas. If you have a LinkedIn presence, even if you don’t post super frequently, you’ve got a brush stroke.

So it’s not necessarily about doing all the things and having a really high time demand and really pushing yourself in your capacity. It’s about doing something that feels right to you. And the most important thing is that you don’t have a blank canvas. Because when you have a blank canvas, then you are a hidden expert. But so long as you have one brush stroke, two brush strokes that are really low maintenance, even like a website, then you are doing it, you’re doing the thing. And then, that’s all that kind of you need to be doing. And anything on top of that, great, like whatever you want to do. But you’re not here necessarily to become a science influencer if that’s not what you want. You are here to share your work and get your work seen.

[Jennifer:] I love that. Brush strokes, such a beautiful way to look at it. And you can build up your canvas over time, if you want to.

[Lily:] Yeah.

[Jennifer:] I remember one of my early guests here on The Social Academic, Aaron Shepherd, he said his goal is to be like Bill Nye The Science Guy. Like he wanted to be a science influencer, but that’s such a rare dream.

Not a lot of people are like, “Oh, I want to be the most visible expert ever.” But so many people are like, “I want to be more visible in my field. I want to be more visible for my science and for the people who this research supports.” I’m so glad they have someone like you, Lily, to support them in that.

[Lily:] Thank you. Yeah, and I, I think that is the thing. If you want to be a science influencer, I can help with that. It’s a big task. I work with science influencers. The amount of work that goes into it. I had my own page during my PhD that I would not call an influencer page, but I had three thousand-ish followers and it was a lot of work. Even then, it’s it’s not this glorified thing. And if you want it, go for it. I will help you. But yeah, it’s definitely not necessarily the goal of most of the people I work with, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s actually more about your science than you.

[Jennifer:] Oh, I so appreciate you, Lily. Is there anything you would like to add before we wrap up?

[Lily:] Not really. I’m just so grateful that you invited me on and yeah, it’s been great to chat with you.

[Jennifer:] Thank you. How can people keep in touch with you after this video?

[Lily:] I’m on social media, so like I said, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m also on Instagram. I’m trying to be better at TikTok, but once you are making content for other people, it’s just, it’s so much harder to make content for yourself. And I also have the website, which has its own email newsletter, and then my community. I think they’re kind of the best ways to stay in touch.

[Jennifer:] Thank you so much everyone. This is Dr. Lily Rosewater of Pitch Science, and we’ve been talking about academic websites, social media, branding, and all of the things that it takes to communicate your science with care in ways that can create change for you. Lily, thank you so much for joining me.

[Lily:] Thank you for having me.

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At Pitch Science, she turns science into stories through her purposeful, strategic, and human-centred online science content. Lily’s branding and website design services transform HiddenExperts™️ into VisibleExperts, so that scientists and science brands are ready to guide online conversations and get their work seen by those who matter. She is also empowering scientists to do science communication themselves and extend their reach beyond traditional academic channels with science communication training sessions and her Pitch Lab community. Because the more research expertise is shared online, the more it benefits everyone.