How the ModumUp team can help a busy scientist in managing online activities and presence, and in building a personal brand.

Sergey Plis, a Professor of Computer Science at Georgia State University (GSU) and Director of Machine Learning at the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging & Data Science (TReNDS), embarked on a journey to establish his personal brand in the fields of neuroimaging and deep learning.

At the TReNDS Center, the team employs advanced data science and machine learning techniques to gain deeper insights into the functioning of the brain. They investigate brain images and mental health using a range of data sources, including MRI and functional MRI scans.

One of their recent projects, Brainchop, is an in-browser 3D MRI rendering and segmentation tool designed to be user-friendly for individuals without technical expertise. It runs on the user's own computer which helps keep the MRI data private and secure.

Sergey began focusing on building his personal brand because he found managing a research team, in his words, "was similar to managing a startup, with the need to assert existence through visibility." He noticed that sometimes the ideas he discussed with his team and wrote about were being discovered again by others as if they were new. This led him to decide that he needed to share his work more widely and build a personal brand to prevent his ideas from being overlooked.

However, managing a thriving research group on top of his duties as a professor at GSU made it difficult for him to maintain an active social media presence. In need of support, Sergey turned to the ModumUp Social Selling agency with the task growing and supporting his LinkedIn and X profiles.

There was also another benefit of building a personal brand that Sergey discovered as he worked with us: he could treat our work together as a journal, and look back to recognize his and his team's accomplishments despite the feeling of not making any progress due to constant work.

Our job was to provide assistance with various tools and techniques to help him grow his profiles. We began by working on increasing the number of connections and followers.

For LinkedIn, we segmented our target audience, identified priority groups: Hospital & Health Care, Biotechnology, Research Services, Software Development, and Education, and systematically started adding representatives from these target groups. Each month, we sent out approximately 500 connection requests and saw an average increase of 300 people per month.

On X, we approached the growth of the profile through publishing tweets, liking tweets related to ML and Neuroscience, and later through potential mutual following, by following 50-100 people in the relevant spheres each week. The average growth of followers was about 100 people per month.

Over the course of two years, our collaboration aimed to enhance Sergey's visibility and credibility among scientists and medical research professionals in the US and Western Europe.

The second major direction of our joint work became the content for Sergey's profiles. The primary goal of the content was to share Sergey and his team's research and work, and to improve their visibility. Our content strategy focused on engaging topics such as student projects, research updates, teaching stories, professional conference experiences, as well as Sergey's personal thoughts on topics that he found interesting.

In terms of content, together with Sergey, we brainstormed interesting topics to discuss during our weekly calls. Based on recordings of these sessions, we prepared drafts that he then edited to add more personality or reviewed the texts he wrote on a whim, making occasional changes to style and structure to enhance text readability. Overall, the whole process is built around co-creation.

The posts that received the highest number of impressions and engagement over the past two years focused on Sergey's research, as well as the work and achievements of his students. Such impactful and novel content naturally attracts higher visibility and interaction, resonating with both academic peers and the general public

Other successful posts featured collaborative research and attendance at numerous conferences, showcasing Sergey as a professional actively involved in the field. Additionally, the natural and lively photos of local sights from the cities where the conferences were held also helped in capturing the readers' attention.

Sergey also mentioned that his attitude and perception to publishing his thoughts, ideas, and opinions has changed since he started working with us.

When discussing effective strategies for explaining complex topics like machine learning and neuroimaging on social media, Sergey said that he likes to share what is truly interesting to him.

He posts about his and his team's work, using analogies and visuals, such as graphs and GIFs. This method not only highlights their progress but also allows him to discuss his personal interests. For example, he enjoys sharing various thoughts on Fridays, using the day as an opportunity to explore a range of subjects, from unique mathematical ideas and eternal life to the merging of machines and human brains.

Besides his research, Sergey also teaches at GSU, although he finds it quite challenging. He has been teaching for over four years and still occasionally struggles with it. Writing about his difficulties and experiences in teaching helps Sergey to reflect on these challenges, and such posts also resonate with people.

Over the last two years, we published a total of 138 posts on LinkedIn, with our most popular post reaching 11,729 views.

When asked which social media platform he prefers, LinkedIn or X, Sergey said he likes LinkedIn better because it lets him write longer posts. However, he also uses X sometimes, mainly for quick browsing to get news and ideas.

LinkedIn Live events are another popular way to build a personal brand on LinkedIn. These events are very engaging and reach a wide audience, which made them a great fit for our project. That's why we suggested Sergey host one.

At first, Sergey wasn't very excited about the idea, and we had to gently push him out of his comfort zone. The decision to start using LinkedIn Live came after a study was published in which Sergey was a consultant on Machine Learning.

As a result, we successfully held a LinkedIn Live event where Sergey and a colleague from the TReNDS Center talked about his work on a Machine Learning project with the Norwegian company, Holberg EEG.

These results boosted Sergey's confidence about speaking live in front of a LinkedIn audience. A couple of months later, we managed to host another event revolving around a paper publication on the topic of interpretability in machine learning by one of his team members from the TReNDS Center.

Despite having fewer invitations because of the short preparation time and fewer visits to the event page, which might have been due to the event being too early for attendees on the West Coast, the registration and event viewing rates were still relatively high. The event also received positive feedback, with several viewers leaving encouraging comments about the topic. That's why we plan to continue hosting similar events every couple of months

Thanks to the development of his personal profile on LinkedIn, Sergey received several incoming requests for consultations,even though we didn't actively seek out leads.

He also got 5 invitations to speak on podcasts and 6 to present at Machine Learning conferences.

We didn't reach out to the podcast hosts or conference organizers ourselves. They found Sergey thanks to his interesting content in his profile. Notably, he accepted an invitation to a local podcast, and his colleague represented their work on a project brainchop.org in a couple of interviews when it was discovered by TensorFlow.js.

Additionally, Sergey's contributions to collaborative articles on LinkedIn earned him two Top Community Voice badges in Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms, recognizing his expertise.

Over the past two years, Sergey Plis undoubtedly felt the efforts of growing the personal brand. It allowed him to establish various new connections, share his work and thoughts with a broader audience. It also helped to improve his personal and professional life by overcoming the fear of being judged and solidifying his identity as an expert in neuroimaging and machine learning not only in the eyes of others but also in his own.

When asked how his increased social media presence has influenced the research and funding opportunities for his laboratory, Sergey answered:

The project is still ongoing, and recently we set ourselves the task of generating leads for TReNDS Center work contracts, on top of audience growth and content preparation. So, work on the personal brand doesn't stop for even a minute.