Leveraging TikTok and other new media for optics educational outreach

ABSTRACT

New media, like the video-sharing application TikTok, are powerful tools for optics education and outreach on a large scale. Public optics outreach is crucial for spreading awareness of the industry and developing the workforce that will tackle the photonics challenges of tomorrow. This paper will cover the strategies that Edmund Optics used to build and scale a company-sponsored optics educational outreach TikTok program that currently has over 35,000 followers and receives up to 2 million views per video. The benefits of launching such a program for any company, educational institution, or national lab and key selling features to get executive buy in are also discussed. Additional benefits to launching such a program include the development of employee/student communication skills, brand awareness both inside and outside of the photonics industry, and improving brand image. With 1.4 billion global users, TikTok presents a promising platform for simultaneously reaching a large audience while targeting people who have demonstrated an interest in STEM topics. Sharing the outreach content made on TikTok across professional platforms like LinkedIn also leads to industry awareness, respect, and collaboration outside the scope of the common perception of TikTok as a casual, business-to-consumer medium. Meeting students, parents, and communities on the platforms they already use greatly simplifies building an audience for educational content. The Edmund Optics TikTok program was started as an experiment during school closures caused by COVID-19 but has now cemented itself as an integral part of the company's larger outreach program.