Boston University’s Ask our Professor Anything on Reddit

Here in TERMINALFOUR, we’re big Boston fans (it being home to our US HQ) and we’re big Reddit fans so when we saw this, we knew we had to feature it. We have talked about Reddit before on the blog and we know how powerful it can be in terms of driving traffic to your website and spreading the word about an idea or campaign.

We came across this great blog post on Medium from the social media team at Boston University about an AMA that their professor, Helen Tager-Flusberg, had done on Reddit. She is an expert on Autism Spectrum Disease, having studied it for 40 years and is considered a leading authority on the subject. In honor of Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month, she agreed to host an AMA to connect with Redditors curious about her profession, her research, and Autism.

AMAs (Ask me Anything) give Reddit users direct access to celebrities, scientists and field experts where they can, as the name suggests, as the person anything. Everyone from Barack Obama to Elon Musk has done an AMA and Reddit users love getting involved.

The questions rolled in for Helen and she in total she answered over 80 questions. They ranged from general questions about autism to quirky questions such as “What did you think of the movie Rainman?”

The AMA was a fantastic way to raise awareness about Helen’s research and the Center that she runs as well as giving insightful answers that helped many people. You can read the full AMA here.

The really interesting takeaway from this article and AMA thread is that, while the purpose of this AMA , wasn’t to drive traffic to the Boston University website, it was an invaluable way to drive awareness and interest about research being done at the university.

It’s certainly a worthy avenue considering if your university would like to spread the word about vital research. It can be difficult to find the right platform to promote research on and a Reddit AMA is an engaging way of doing it. It also gives you access to the thread’s 16 million subscribers, all of whom could potentially read or interact with your AMA.

If your university has participated in an AMA, let us know in the comments below or get in touch at marketing@terminalfour.com

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