If you’ve been following along with the Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, you know that we provide guidance for life science and biotech companies to start and grow. We’re taking this from virtual to IRL (in real life ;) at our October 29th Bootstrapping Biotech event with the San Diego Biotechnology Network. We’ve lined up some excellent speakers who will cover everything from getting funded to strategic and tactical marketing and social media for your company or products. We’ve had a lot of interest so far, even outside of San Diego, and really think that a lot of great, synergistic connections will be made at the event. Even if you don’t work at a small company, we think you’ll be able to learn and meet those who can help you make the most out of your marketing budget. As always, we’re open to feedback as to what you’d like to see–leave a comment here or on the SDBN site.

I’ve recently come to appreciate the true power of RSS, or really simple syndication. RSS feeds are a way for websites to easily communicate their updated information. Because the information is standardized, it can be picked up by other applications which aggregate the information, such as Google Reader (GR, see summaries here and here for help getting started).

So what? You can set up some really cool automated tools to keep up on just about anything on the internet, including topics relevant to science and biotech business. You can keep tabs on the latest work in your field by setting up RSS feeds for pubmed searches. You can also follow blogs and news by searching for ‘RSS’ or looking for the orange symbol on any website, and subscribe. If you’re like me, you’ll actually feel a bit excited when you find a great blog or website, and find that you can add them to GR.

There are also clever ways to feed customized information into and out of GR. You can set up Google Alerts for updates any topic on the web, and feed it directly into GR (choose ‘deliver to feed). This is great if you work at a company and want to keep tabs on your competitors and their products, or even on your own company. You will know almost instantly when updates are made to a very wide variety of websites (you will be surprised how thoroughly the alerts ’search’ for information), and GR stores all of the information for your future reference. I have even heard of people feeding all of their email into GR!

GR also has clever ways to send information out, which can be handy if you have colleagues or clients that want updates without using GR. You can put feeds into a folder and send the results into a publicly viewable page. You can go one step further and set up email updates via Feedburner, if you really want to make it easy (we used this trick for our ‘Instant Social Media for Scientists‘ email updates).

So, are you ready to wow your colleagues and coworkers by knowing the latest and greatest, as it happens? This post was partly inspired by a San Diego scientist who told me he was doing just that–impressing his boss with his knowledge of cutting edge research through GR. Additionally, using RSS information can help you to become a ‘channel‘ of information for posting items to social media applications such as twitter. Check it out, and start by subscribing to the Comprendia RSS feed!

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Our founder Mary Canady realized a lifelong dream today. She was able to combine her love of the 80’s with her love of science in a single Xconomy post, check it out! Seriously, though, the BIL:PIL event represents a ’sea change’ in how important issues such as health care will be more accessible our input as scientists and patients, and I highly suggest attending it.

October 20-24, 2009

Honolulu, HI

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If you’ve been following our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog, you likely know that we are ‘in the know’ about social media. We’ve used it to grow our own company and the San Diego Biotechnology Network, and we’ll be featuring our work with other companies soon. Check out our Social Media Capabilities page to learn more and to get started!

A common theme, and something that is very satisfying with our work, is that through our actions we show biotech and life science companies how they can use tools such as social media to grow as we have. About six months ago at a San Diego Biotechnology Network event, we gave out CDs with a few of our Biotechnology Marketing 101 presentations. Cynthia Davenport, Ph.D., Founder of TigerTox Pharmaceutical Toxicology Services, received one, and actually looked at them and gave us a call (very cool when things work as intended!).

After meeting with Cynthia, we decided that the best way to get started was with a BioStartup™ Marketing Kit, providing her with a logo, branding, and website in one package. We started by gathering TigerTox’s needs through our online Creative Briefs, a process we utilize to assess high-level objectives, tactical details, and to tease out aspects important for positioning companies and products. The Creative Brief process is a mainstay of traditional marketing, and we have made it more accessible to our clients through our online forms and have also tailored them for new tools such as social media.

We received Cynthia’s Creative Briefs and started with her logo. The process went quickly because she knew what she liked (and didn’t!) and we refined the logo in a few rounds. Communication and setting expectations are key in the process. The TigerTox logo is simple, expressive of her company’s name, versatile, and is part of a larger branding of the company as a whole. What we love about the Creative Brief process is that we can always look to it for guidance and keep on track to be sure objectives are met.

Next, we developed a website and ‘ToxInsights’ blog for TigerTox. We leveraged WordPress, great software which provides a framework for professional, dynamic, and easily administered websites (even high-powered blogs like Johnson & Johnson’s JNJBTW use it). We utilized our programming and design skills to created a branded site which is highly customized, allowing for integration with Twitter, RSS feeds, and search engine optimization (SEO).

We also provided in-depth technical and social media training to TigerTox, allowing Cynthia and her associates to hit the ground running–they’ve already got several blog posts done. We even helped TigerTox to easily find resources to help with blogging and Twitter through a customized RSS feed. Our background in life science as well as social media helps us to anticipate our clients’ needs, as we’ve used the tools firsthand to reach scientists. We also help companies develop a Social Media Charter™ to guide you and ensure that objectives are met, you can learn more on our Social Media Capabilities page.

To summarize, we GREATLY enjoyed working with TigerTox and we love the fact that they looked to us for inspiration. We hope that you’ll in turn be inspired by them to develop your business or products, as they truly ‘get it’ and have a great product for drug development. We plan to give more examples and resources at the upcoming Bootstrapping Biotech event with the San Diego Biotechnology Network October 29th. Not in town? We’re videotaping it and will provide links afterward. Also, contact us for a free consultation, perhaps the best way to become inspired!

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