In this interview, Summer Goodwin, a communications leader at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, shares her journey of transforming social media strategies within a traditional organisation. Through experimentation, data-driven approaches, and fostering a culture of creativity, Summer has been instrumental in making science communications more accessible, relatable and compelling. This interview explores her experiences, challenges, and advice for those looking to make an impact in communications.
Summer, if you could instantly gain expert knowledge in any scientific field, which one would you choose and why?
I would choose psychology. While I’m passionate about environmental science and the ocean—I love swimming and stand-up paddle-boarding—psychology interests me because of its focus on human behaviour. I do organisational coaching, which is grounded in positive psychology.
Understanding what makes people tick and thrive is invaluable, especially as a leader. It’s helpful to read between the lines and listen for what’s not being said by team members or stakeholders. This insight can be a powerful tool in how you approach problem-solving and fostering positive working relationships.
What are three emojis that describe an average day in your role at CSIRO?
First, I’d choose the heart emoji because I love what I do. It also reflects the passion, commitment and sense of purpose that drives everyone who works at CSIRO.
The second emoji would be the starry-eyed emoji. This represents the sense of awe and wonder I feel about both our science and our communications. While I might be involved in the initial idea, seeing the final product—whether it’s a social media post or a large marketing campaign—is so inspiring.
The third emoji is the skull emoji. It’s very Gen Z, but it captures the challenges we face in a fast-paced and issues-rich environment. We have a lot of laughs, but the pressure is there, and the skull emoji is often the perfect response.
CSIRO is known for tradition. How did you pivot towards embracing modern social media strategies?
CSIRO’s purpose is to solve the greatest challenges using innovative science and technology. We’ve adopted a scientific approach to digital storytelling and social media. I’ve been fortunate to have leaders who have trusted me to embed an experimental approach to our owned channels. As a result, we’re able to be very creative and innovative with our content.
The key to getting buy-in has been embedding a data-driven approach. We conduct experiments, analyse the results, and measure the impact. If the experiment goes well, we replicate it. If it goes badly, we learn something. We might try an idea several different ways before we nail it or abandon it.
Over time, we’ve been able to educate the broader business—whether it’s science communicators, researchers, or leaders—on the value of social media. Our goal is to make our science accessible, useful and engaging for our different audiences. Whether we’re communicating with a young person, a senior leader or a small business owner, it is about answering: ‘Why should this matter to them? How does this research impact their life?’ By tapping into what people are talking about and what matters to our audiences, we make our science more timely, relevant and relatable.
What are some steps you took to get buy-in from leadership and the research teams?
We started with communicators who were receptive to creative ideas, focusing on science communicators working in low-risk areas of our research. By demonstrating the impact of creative approaches—whether through memes, video, or digital storytelling—we’ve been able to demonstrate value. Over time, as more people saw the value, we were able to expand these approaches across the organisation.
Our research shows brand awareness and trust are strongly linked. By driving awareness through social media, we’ve been able to build trust in science, CSIRO, and our evidence-based research. Our scientists and staff are at the centre of our storytelling, which draws on high trust (determined by the Edelman Trust Barometer) in scientists, ‘a person like me’, and our peers.
We’ve been able to take a strategic, creative and data-driven approach and embed it. Now it’s pretty much expected within the organisation that we will do something really fun, cool and original with their research! So, over the five-and-a-half years I’ve been leading the digital and content strategy at CSIRO, the shift has been quite significant.
Do you feel that because of the success, you’re not getting as much pushback internally anymore?
There’s definitely less tension around it. At the start, we would suggest a meme, and the response might be, ‘no, this is serious science’. Or a researcher might not always be happy we’re using a pop culture reference, like Taylor Swift or Barbie.
It’s an ongoing education piece around the importance of accessible science communications. If we want our science and innovation to be relevant to the Australian community, particularly young people, we need to talk about our research in simple, understandable and relatable language.
There’s no point sharing information people can’t understand unless they have a science degree. It’s not about dumbing down the science – it’s about making the science accessible to everyone. Anyone should be able to go to our social media channels and understand what the research is about and its impact without needing background in the research area or science.
What’s your favourite feedback you’ve received?
My favourite piece of feedback was during weekend monitoring. We got this message from a member of our community saying something like: “Whenever I’m scrolling through social media and I see the CSIRO logo pop up in my feed, I just know that everything’s gonna be OK.’
I love that my work can make people hopeful. When you look at climate communications, for example, people can feel quite powerless. The antidote to this is action-focussed communications. So, we really try to create action-oriented content wherever we can. Yes, we’ve got this wicked problem. What is CSIRO doing about it and what can I do about it? Being able to take simple, positive, actions today can help mitigate feelings of helplessness in addressing challenges like climate change.
Who would you consider your target audience?
You are part of our youth target audience, which includes Gen Z and millennials. Our priority audiences include business and industry partners, government, large corporates, universities, small to medium enterprises, including start-ups and innovators, parents and teachers, and older Australians including Gen X and baby boomers.
Young people are crucial for CSIRO because they represent the next generation of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) scientists and innovators. Many children engage with science through our Double Helix magazine as children, but lose touch with us when they go to university. After graduation, CSIRO may come back onto their radar. We see a dip in awareness among 18 to 24-year-olds, so we focus on keeping them engaged and inspiring them to study STEM. Equal representation of women and diverse groups in science fields is still lacking, which means promoting diversity in our science communications is vital.
You may have seen our ‘Impossible Without You’ campaign, which focused on recruiting 18 to 34-year-old early-career researchers. One of the things I’m most proud of with this campaign is we had a diversity target of 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men, and 20 per cent of any gender. We ended up recruiting 48 per cent women.
Is there a secret sauce to your messaging?
We have a few different ways we brainstorm ideas. We have a morning meeting every day where we discuss what’s happening in the world, what happened overnight, and current issues. We’ll brainstorm from there. For example, something may have happened overnight, like an Olympic event, or a news story, or something went viral. As a team, we discuss whether it’s appropriate for our channels and how we could potentially link it to our science. Everything we publish on our channels has a direct link to our work, except for Wombat Wednesday, which is purely for brand engagement.
We need to ensure our content is child-safe and consider how different audiences—like Gen Z versus Baby Boomers—might perceive it. We put a risk lens over everything we do to ensure it’s appropriate, even if the audience doesn’t know the context.
We have a brainstorming meeting every week for owned articles and for social media. I lead the digital storytelling brainstorm meeting. But I try not to attend the social media brainstorm, so the team has complete freedom to be creative! I don’t want to be the ‘fun police’ putting the risk lens over everything. We look at the data, upcoming events, and what ideas have been successful. We also have a document full of ideas to revisit when we need inspiration.
What kind of content do you find performs well?
Our most engaging post of the week is generally Wombat Wednesday – everyone loves it. For everything else, we try to start with either high-quality visuals (photos or videos) or a strong but simple idea. Knowing your audience is crucial, and our audience loves geeky and playful science content. So we really lean into that.
For us it is less about the format of the content and more the idea and execution. We usually need to turn content around quickly, so simple ideas and uncomplicated visuals work best for us. We find jumping on pop culture or viral moments quickly yields impressive results. For example, for the Logies this year we shared a ‘who wore it better’ post comparing outfits to moths and linked to an article on our moth research. Sharing it shortly after the event was key to its success.
The surprise hit of the year has been our ‘Mineral of the Month’ series. One of my favourite pieces in this series was when our scientist grew epsomite crystals to photograph for the article! We included a recipe for how to make them at home, which we shared during National Science Week.
What I love about social media is sometimes the posts you think will be very successful don’t resonate, while surprise hits – like our video series for Double Helix with science experiments for kids – do exceptionally well. If an idea performs well, we replicate it in new ways. If it doesn’t, we try it differently. We usually keep trying a good idea in various forms before moving on.
When combining different elements, you’ll always get some mixed reactions, and that’s okay. Channel strategy is important – for example, posts that do well on Instagram might not work on Facebook due to different audiences. Facebook audiences may not know the latest TikTok trends but will likely appreciate references to ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘Friends.’
Are you finding that short-form video content and video in general are powerful tools for engaging with your audience?
Yes. We’re using video in various ways. For example, we share science explainers where our researchers or science communicators explain key concepts or science news. We often use video to leverage TikTok and Instagram trends to communicate our science. We also use YouTube Shorts to link to longer-form videos.
Video is a great tool for engagement, but don’t underestimate the power of a beautiful image or a meme with a strong hook. Our most engaged post of all time is a photo of an echidna.
We also use Canva to create simple carousels explaining science across multiple tiles, which is very effective. Canva is a fantastic tool for us.
In terms of success, social media can often focus on metrics like clicks and likes. But what does success look like for you in your role? What metrics are you looking at when you post something, and what is the end goal you’re trying to drive?
Our success metrics are aligned with our communication strategy and the broader organisational strategy. We’re aiming for Australia’s national science agency to be trusted, connected and understood. This includes our work, science, innovation, partnerships and culture.
We track awareness metrics like engagement and impressions, consideration metrics such as website visits, and conversion metrics including followers and business leads. It’s critical these metrics align with our overall strategy. For example, awareness is crucial because it links to trust. We are now the most trusted Australian government brand, which awareness generated through digital, social and traditional media has contributed to.
While vanity metrics (like follower numbers) might look good, it’s essential these metrics ladder up to delivering on the organisation’s strategic goals. Social media follower numbers matter to us because one of our strategic communication goals is connected. Follower numbers are a suitable metric to demonstrate our connection with the Australian community.
How do you balance creativity with maintaining brand integrity on social media?
We’ve managed to build and maintain a distinctive and cohesive brand personality, which is ‘geeky cool.’ While we do jump onto TikTok trends, we don’t embrace all of them. We might incorporate a trend into ‘Wombat Wednesday’ or use it to repromote our research. If there isn’t a strong link to our science, for example ‘very demure, very mindful’, we’ll use subtle references. We did geeky email sign-offs (inspired by Gen Z trend) and ‘things that just make sense at my workplace,’ to promote our organisational culture as part of our employer brand campaign.
Our ability to move quickly with trends is partly because our approval process is streamlined. We usually have a two-step approval process with the content lead needing approval from the research unit lead and then the social media manager. We add in more approval layers as needed, for example our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content is also approved by our Indigenous Office.
As a government agency, we need to be careful about the trends we engage with to ensure they align with our brand and our audience. When we get negative feedback or something isn’t quite right, we view it as a learning opportunity. I strive to create an environment where mistakes are okay, and responsibility is shared. If something goes wrong, I take full responsibility, and if something succeeds, I make sure to celebrate the individual’s and team’s effort. Giving the team creative freedom results in higher-quality content. I find multiple approval layers can dilute creativity, inspiration and (ironically) overall quality.
What advice would you give to someone starting in communications?
I would focus on mastering skills aligned with your natural talents and curiosity. Take the time to train, practice and master your craft. I’ve done this with writing and editing. But also work on your weaknesses. For me, this was maths, which I found difficult at school. But I’ve practiced working with numbers and data analytics for many years because it’s essential to my job. And now I’m quite good with numbers! You don’t need to master your weaknesses—just learn the skills you specifically need and get competent enough to succeed in your role.
I’d also recommend doing the things you’re afraid of. For example, I was always passionate about writing, and I’ve continued to refine those skills. But I avoided video because it felt intimidating – and I was already a published photographer! If I could go back, I’d tell my younger self to start making videos sooner, take the risk of not being the best. Don’t be afraid to try out new tools, to fail – I prefer to say fall – and keep learning.
What advice do you have for brands hesitant to take up social media?
I’d recommend starting with just two channels where your target audience is. You don’t need to be on every platform—focus on where you can make the most impact. Once you’ve chosen your channels, experiment with different types of content. For example, if you’re posting four times a week, aim for three engagement pieces and one consideration piece. Occasionally, add in a conversion-focused post. And don’t be afraid to try new ideas. When something doesn’t work, you’ll learn more about your audience and refine your approach.
What has been the biggest surprise for you in this journey?
My biggest surprise after 25 years working in communications is that I still love what I do. I started in social media in 2009 and, while the platforms and tools have evolved, the core principles haven’t changed. I really enjoy leading creative teams, and I feel privileged to work in a job that I’m passionate about. I love writing, and even after all these years, it’s something I continue to enjoy. It’s a privilege to do meaningful work and actively contribute to a better society.