The ESRC offer a list of nine factors which help generate impact:
- establishing networks and relationships with research users
- acknowledging the expertise and active roles played by research users in making impact happen
- involving users at all stages of the research, including working with user stakeholder and participatory groups
- flexible knowledge exchange strategies, which recognise the roles that partners and collaborators may wish to play
- developing good understanding of policy/practice contexts and encouraging users to bring knowledge of context to research
- commitment to portfolios of research activity that build up reputations with research users
- consistent working towards excellent infrastructure, leadership and management support
- involve intermediaries and knowledge brokers as translators, amplifiers, network providers at times
- supporting space and time for collaborative reflection on research design and process, findings and overall progress
I wonder if it would be a useful exercise to go through each in turn, outlining the ways in which social media could be used to support? The role of social media in generating research impact can be overhyped but it is still relevant to each of these factors, particularly if we move beyond seeing it as nothing more than a dissemination mechanism.
Mark Carrigan 
I am sure it would. But it is also important to acknowledge the difference between the potential of social media for doing X vs. the challenges of doing so – e.g., I found it so much easier to network and engage in conversations when there were fewer users; and I may not be totally honest in my ‘reflections’ if I think that it may be used against me.
Sure, inherent limits on what you can cover in a workshop though
It does lend itself to a diagram of sorts though, which may be easier to talk through. Given the emphasis on impact and the haziness around social media, I think that clarifying points and highlighting routes would be useful for many in academia.