Biotechnology and Life Science Marketing Consulting: Comprendia » 2008

You’ve surely noticed it in other areas–the news is chock full of stories about how businesses are using social media to get ahead. What about using social media in the biotechnology or life sciences industry to help your business to grow? Well, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that Biotech’s presence is lagging behind other industries in most social media. Searching “biotech” in Facebook and Twitter gives a small number of results compared to other industries, and most of the bookmarking sites don’t even have a biotechnology category (we’ll define these media below). The good news is that now is the time to get active in this media, so that you can get traction now before the competition discovers how useful it is. Besides further engaging your customers (a la Web 2.0), you can also use it to increase your web traffic by improving your search engine ranking.

We plan to publish several blog articles in our Marketing 101™ series on using social media to grow your business. Social media can be described as split up into the 4 C’s: Context, Contacts, Communication, and Collaboration. There is a broad range of applications and a lot to cover, and things change literally daily. In this initial installment, I’m providing the following guide to social media get us started, and you can also check out the Wikipedia entry.

Social Media	Category	Details	Current Relevance for Biotech	Future Relevance for Biotech
LinkedIn	Professional Network	Enter your profile and link to present and former colleagues.	High: Networking, lead generation, recruiting, and a lot of capabilities for promoting yourself and business (questions, Ads, groups, polls).	High: Inevitably they should allow more focused networking, more functionality for groups, and enhanced profile capabilities (blogs?).
Facebook	Personal (mostly) Social Network	Enter your personal profile and connect with friends.	Low: Very young demographic, many users don’t list professional interests.	Medium: Adults are a fast-growing demographic on Facebook. Eventually a large number of your customers will be there. However, targeted social networks are thought to be better for reaching customers (see Ning, CollectiveX entries).
Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit	Bookmark Sharing Site	Enter interesting web pages as bookmarks here, they are available for your contacts and the public to see–used as a way to see “what’s hot.”	Medium: Create more links to your site, improve search engine ranking. Use buttons on your site to encourage sharing (see bottom of this post, you may need to refresh).	Same
Ning, CollectiveX	Social Network Development	Create your own topical and/or regional social network.	Medium	High: Create a network specific to your field; great way to produce leads and get feedback from customers. Can be time intensive.
Nature Networks, SciLink	Targeted Professional Network	Create a profile, network, and communicate with biotech researchers.	High: Good way to reach a large number of researchers. Publications are listed, making targeting even more powerful.	Same
Blogs	Web Log	Devote an area of your website to a "journal" that is updated periodically with company, industry or research news, or application notes.	High: Create interest, engage customers more, and create content that will be indexed by search engines.	High
FriendFeed	Microblogging Service	Will display an individual’s activities on a variety of social media/ bookmarking sites.	Medium:Create links and interest among readers	High: Great potential here as it “takes off,” as there are so many great online resources that scientists can share. In addition, the “rooms” here are a place to share information on a specific topic like this one from PLoS
Twitter	Microblogging Service	Post status updates and links to news and resources.	Medium	High: Very powerful to create interest by posting news, relevant reports or research, and links to your site, will be more useful with increased biotech presence.
Wikipedia	Open Source Encyclopedia	Post description of your company and create or contribute to areas of interest.	Medium	Same
Flickr, SlideShare	Photo and Presentation Sharing	Upload/share photos and powerpoint presentations.	Medium: Flickr used by BIO2008, SlideShare could become a more powerful resource to disseminate information about your company.	Same

Comprendia has recently become active on Twitter, and we have found it to be a great way to keep in touch with the (small) biotech and drug discovery community presence there, and to get people to visit the site. We have also used LinkedIn and Ning to create the Biotech Marketing Group, which will facilitate networking and exchange of information between professionals in the area. The capabilities of the “out of the box” tools such as Ning are growing daily, so you don’t have to build them from scratch. In addition, there is a wealth of biotech news, reports and research available in myriad places, allowing you to leverage the information to create interest in your website and products.

In the coming installments, we will provide tips on using social media to build your biotech or life science business. Let us know if you have any specific questions you’d like us to address. Also, check out our full Marketing 101 series to learn more about leveraging marketing tactics and strategies for biotech or life science business growth. If you can’t wait to get started, contact us about integrating social media into your business and marketing strategy, and you’ll get a leg up on your competition!

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