Using our team accounts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, , we were able to communicate and spread information about our team and our project with a large audience of all ages and from all countries. We organised our social media communication into different series, with different purposes : presenting the team members, explaining some aspects of the project, raising awareness about cancer, allowing our followers to know our progress, … Social media, and especially Instagram, was also the best way to get in touch with other iGEM teams and to get involved in challenges!

Presentation of iGEM and SynBio

We wanted our first posts this year to be about the iGEM competition and synthetic biology, to introduce our community, which was not very into these subjects at the beginning of our project, to these notions.

#FactsOfTheWeek

#FactsOfTheWeek describes the series of posts we created to educate our followers about the different aspects of our project. From June to August, every week (or almost), 2 to 3 facts were published about cancer, diagnosis, biopsies, miRNA, exosomes, toehold switches or microfluidics. This series allowed us to educate and make sure our project was accessible to all publics, even non-scientific, by using everyday language and not only extremely precise science words.

Building ExoSwitch

Regularly, we have published posts to show a little bit of the progress of our project, both in the lab and outside. We name this series “Building ExoSwitch”, as if it was a real Netflix show with several episodes. Each time, there was some information about the wetlab, drylab, finances, human practices, collaborations, education or just comm. It was important for us to show our progress in this way, different from the classical way of many laboratories which make "progress reports" often very long and boring.

Octobre Rose

Octobre Rose is a French annual communication campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer screening and to raise funds for research. Held each October since 1985, the campaign aims to raise awareness of the disease and funds for research. During Octobre Rose, we wanted to communicate more specifically about cancers and especially breast cancer. It is important for us to raise awareness during this month. We published a survey to better know our followers’ knowledge and better answer their questions and fill the gaps. Based on the results of the survey, different posts with facts were published, so that our community could learn new info, or recall why fighting cancer is an important cause in today’s society.

Challenges

Every year in iGEM, many teams launch challenges on social networks: taking pictures in the lab, in our city, simple, funny or serious questions, ... Our team obviously took part in many challenges, which allowed our team to feel a little closer to others in a still difficult context in some parts of the world. You can have a look below at our participation in the iGEM Monument Challenge, from team GO_Paris-Saclay. You will never find a most beautiful city!