Instagram & Botânica: o caso do herbário SORO

Abstract

Herbaria are collections of dried and pressed plants, usually for research and teaching purposes. These are the collections that provide the basis for Plant Systematics, which deals with the identification, classification and nomenclature of plants. The SORO herbarium, focus of this project, is located at the Federal University of São Carlos - Sorocaba campus and currently has about 7,488 computerized plants, and the families with the highest number of species in the collection are Fabaceae and Myrtaceae. The species in the collection are mostly collected in the Sorocaba region, mainly from the Semideciduous Seasonal Forest and Cerrado formations.

The social network chosen as the focus of this project was Instagram. The project aimed to disseminate information, content and knowledge in the field of Botany, especially the SORO herbarium, in an attractive way for university students and the community, through the creation of a new visual identity for the SORO herbarium, production of quality content and attractiveness and adaptation of technical-scientific language to the usual language on social networks. The methodology used in the project divided the actions into 6 main steps: 1. Creation of the visual identity; 2. Instagram profile adjustments; 3. Profile management on Instagram for 2 months, with weekly content posts; 4. Monitoring of success metrics; 5. Training in social media management applied to Botany and 6. Preparation of the manual of good social media management practices applied to herbaria.

In the first stage, the visual and written communication of Herbário SORO was established: logo, typography, visual elements, color palette, verbal guidelines and tone of voice. In the second step, all the visual identity changes built in step 1 were applied to the profile, changing profile picture, highlights and biography.

In the management stage, market research was carried out, analyzing the Instagram profile of each herbarium in order to understand the behavior and presence of other Brazilian herbariums on this social network. After gathering all this information, the pillars of communication that guided the contents that were produced in the profile of the SORO herbarium were defined, namely: Commemorative dates: production of content for important dates (for example: Farmer's Day, Cerrado Day, etc. .); Botany on the Plate: series of posts about the foods we eat every day, telling the botanical story behind them; Plants that changed the world: series on plants important to human history; The tree on my street: series on urban afforestation; Informative content: posts with tips and relevant information about Botany and the herbarium; e Is it poisonous or not?: series about poisonous plants.

Among the results, a new visual identity, in addition to the SORO herbarium logo, was created using a color palette that brought a greater visual impact to the profile, more adapted to Instagram. In addition, additional visual elements were defined to be applied to posts. During the profile adjustments phase, all the necessary changes were made, changing the profile picture, biography (text located right below the username) and highlights (a feature that Instagram offers to extend the useful life of shared “stories”).

After defining the pillars of communication and selecting the publication formats, an editorial calendar was prepared for the posts. The posts were produced based on the content provided by Herbarium SORO's team of users and managers, essentially professors and students.

At the end of the management period, it is possible to observe the impact that the change in visual identity and the content produced had on the success metrics analyzed: a significant growth in the number of followers, reach, impression and engagement (likes, comments, sharing and saved ). In absolute numbers, during the 2 months of herbarium SORO's Instagram management, the profile reached 7,111 people, acquired 55 followers and obtained 767 interactions with the publications (engagement). The number of followers and the reach and impression numbers tend to increase as the number of posts increases.

Training in social media management applied to Botany was given to the team at the SORO herbarium, lasting 1h30min. In the end, a manual of good practices was produced, which was made available to herbarium users and to the Brazilian herbarium network, with the aim of helping other herbariums in the creation and management of their Instagram profiles, to carry out good management and disseminate knowledge Botanical technical-scientific on social networks.