Optimizing social media initiatives to promote Neuropsychopharmacology (NPP) publications

Social media provides journals with valuable opportunities to communicate with scholars and the public, and rapidly disseminate new publications. In recent years, the Neuropsychopharmacology (NPP) social media team created multiple initiatives on X (formerly Twitter) to highlight the journal's publications and activities. We examined whether these initiatives promoted readership and identified effective posting strategies for engaging NPP's audience by analyzing analytics from the @npp_journal X account (i.e., total engagement, URL clicks) and article accesses reported by NPP's publisher, Springer Nature. In 2023-2024, we found that article promotions at the time of publication produced the most engagement compared to other initiatives on X; these promotions coincided with increased web traffic to articles. Posts that included an author's X handle received more engagement compared to untagged posts, which also corresponded with an increase in article accesses. The number of URL clicks on articles featured in This Week in NPP (TWiNPP), a weekly summary of new publications launched in 2023, increased after it was rescheduled from Fridays to Tuesdays following observations that posts made earlier in the week received the most engagement. The number of accesses to articles featured in TWiNPP did not differ compared to articles published before the rollout of TWiNPP; however, this endeavor may still provide benefit given the recent reported declines in X usage. These findings support the use of X to promote NPP publications and maximize research visibility. These findings also suggest the journal may benefit from diversifying its online presence to other popular platforms to broaden engagement of its readership.