On 31 August 2024, about five years after its launching, the B4P Facebook page transgressed the number of 4,000 followers. This is a great success of our social media dissemination.
In general, to facilitate science-society transfer and to increase awareness among relevant stakeholders in the field of sustainable building and sustainable neighbourhood development, Build4People has worked intensively on the public documentation of its manifold research work, targeting at various types of audiences beyond the project’s own community, including media and the general public. This transparent approach of good scientific practice and visualization to provide state-of-the art science communication is a central transformative component of Build4People.
In this context, our most successful social media platform in terms of reach is the B4P Facebook page with now more than 4,000 followers. This is aimed primarily at the Cambodian public and especially at young people as agents of change and future decision-makers. The Build4People Facebook page is used to provide information not only about Build4People activities, but also on good practice examples for green buildings and sustainable neighborhood development, as well as innovative policy and governance approaches. There are currently around 90-100 postings per year on Facebook alone. The Facebook “insights tool” allows for direct quantitative measurement of the outreach and engagement levels. This has provided significant insights into the interests and awareness levels of the audience. The most successful post on the Build4People Facebook page in May 2024 reached more than 250,000 people and was shared more than 600 times. This proven figure illustrates how a smart social media strategy can complement research activities and formal academic publications by disseminating knowledge and insights to a broader public via informal channels, thus ensuring wider awareness of activities and results across large swathes of society, including among residents of the urban structures we investigated.
Furthermore, the Build4People website serves as a platform and archive for comprehensive documentation of the project activities (including news, events, press and media coverage, and publications). The density of information on the Build4People website therefore goes far beyond the annual Build4People reports to the funding provider.
Build4People’s presence on the business social media platform LinkedIn with more than 650 followers is primarily aimed at representatives from business and science.
In addition, the Build4People YouTube channel, which provides documentation of our activities as well as several webinars, also achieves a very wide reach, with the 30 videos published having tallied about 57,000 views to date.
The following overview shows Build4People’s various social media platforms and their respective reach.
