Comprendia is dedicated to improving communication in life science and biotechnology, and towards that end we are big proponents of social media. Our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2: The 4 B’s of First Party Applications interactive webinar will take place July 28th from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. Pacific Time. During this four hour workshop, you’ll learn how to build web 2.0 applications including blogs, forums, wikis, and how to generate meaningful content for life scientists. For each strategy or application, you’ll learn the 4 B’s crucial to attracting scientists and achieving a good ROI: the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech Examples. Register here or contact us if you’re interested in a private or customized version of the workshop.

We also offer training for social media applications such as Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, and Facebook, check out our Social Media Training and Workshops page for more information. We can also customize the training for your business, contact us for more information.

We’ve put together a list of life science wikis on the SDBN site. It’s a resource for life scientists, and also a great resource for life science companies to consider, and we found a nice example of a company who is using a wiki well. If you’d like to learn more about using a wiki, come to our June 22nd Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop in San Diego, where we’ll cover the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech examples. Earlybird registration ends Wednesday, don’t be late! We’ll also be offering the workshop virtually and perhaps in your area soon, contact us for more details.

We think it’s great that we can count 33 life science company blogs on our list, and we applaud those companies who are leveraging this flavor of social media. You may know that we are blog aficionados, however, and that we are very…ahem…opinionated as to how corporate blogs should be designed, both strategically and tactically. While I’m hesitant to specifically call out blogs that need improvement, I’ll provide my top five ‘wishes’ for them below to help life science companies succeed.

Use WordPress.org. There are several ways in which you can implement a blog ranging from 3rd party sites (e.g., WordPress.com, TypePad) which will host the site for you, to software that is installed on your web server (e.g., WordPress.org). Installing WordPress.org may take a bit longer at the very beginning, but it offers much more flexibility, and the benefits far outweigh any initial delays (which really should be minimal because the software is constantly becoming easier to install and use). WordPress.org is more versatile because there is much more control over the interface and functionality of your blog. WordPress.org installations allow access to hundreds of modules called themes and plugins, giving unlimited interface and branding options. We see several life science companies who’ve produced a blog that looks nothing like their website and has very limited functionality, likely because they’re using 3rd party software with fewer options. As we’ll discuss in the next item, this flexibility allows you to extend the brand of your website. As we explained in an earlier post describing our STIR Social Media system, engaging scientists and maximizing return on investment (ROI) requires creating applications with very specific attributes, so having maximal flexibility is important. (Note: WordPress.com and WordPress.org utilize the same software, the only difference is in where it is installed.)

Think carefully about branding. Everything about your blog should meet the high standards you have for your website. This includes all the hard work you’ve put into your main website interface and ensuring that your brand is represented accurately. We would like to see more life science companies remembering the importance of branding, as many of the blogs have little resemblance to their corporate site. As pointed out by social media guru Chris Brogan in his book Trust Agents, a big part of success in social media comes from garnering trust from your audience. Think about it, would you trust a blog from a company which had no resemblance to the branding you’ve come to expect from them? The MO BIO Laboratories blog is perhaps the best example of a well branded, integrated blog.

Choose a unifying content theme. Alleviating customer ‘pains’ is a good strategy for engaging scientists and achieving a good ROI with social media, something we discuss often. Learn about the biggest issues customers have in your product area, and develop a blog theme which addresses it. Stay focused on this theme, so that scientists know where to turn to with a problem. We see some life science companies having difficulties in this area, they blog about diverse topics which may be interesting, but don’t meet customer needs. A great example of a company that does it well is Accelrys–their blog is targeted and seems to fill a niche for scientists who have questions about their informatics products.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Along the same lines as extending your brand and having a consistent theme, is to rely on the same resources your company has been using for years to engage customers. We strongly believe that life science companies have been using social media-like strategies and tactics for years, by supplying useful newsletters, posters, and online applications. Why not breathe some fresh life into these resources, providing updates and more web-friendly versions of newsletters, application notes, etc. on your blog? Taking a look at what has worked well in the past will also point you towards a unifying theme for your blog.

Think outside the blog. Some companies who decide they need a blog forget about the the ‘social’ component of ‘social media.’ Personal bloggers start blogs for the love of their subject matter, and naturally seek out other bloggers, interacting with them by leaving comments on their blogs, etc. This is a major part of the reason blogs do so well with search engines–fellow bloggers link to each other, providing the inbound links that show search engines that a website’s content is highly regarded and worth a high search rank. This may sound like just an algorithm, but experience and common sense points to the conclusion that those who engage with the community are more knowledgeable and trustworthy. We’ve seen many life science company blogs set up as silos–independent of their corporate website, and with few noticeable ties to other blogs, twitter/microblogging, etc. (we may be wrong, correct us below!). An example is the Accelrys blog–no blogroll and a link to a twitter account that is inconsistently updated and mostly non-interactive (sorry, had to throw one criticism in!). Those of us who employ many facets of social media know that a synergistic strategy is crucial to success for many reasons, including achieving more engagement, benefiting from the community, and getting more leads. We want life science companies to be successful with social media, and would love to see you engaging with the community more.

We’ll be talking more in depth about first party social media applications such as blogging at our June 22nd Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop in San Diego. We’d also be happy to give you training or a free consultation to help you get the most out of social media. Contact us for more information, and be sure to subscribe to this blog so you’ll get tips like these. Also, why not start engaging more by leaving a comment below?

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Five Things We Wish Life Science Company Blogs Would Do http://bit.ly/bRFFEm

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago in June of 2008, I started Comprendia. Colleagues at Stinson Brand Innovation helped me with a logo and branding, and I set up the Comprendia website using the free WordPress platform. Now, in June 2010, we find ourselves as a two year old company with what I consider to be a good reputation and solid experience. Maybe I have too many friends with little kids, but I can’t help but to try to think about what we’ve learned, and what we have yet to learn, from a two year old child’s perspective. Here goes!

Sharing is good. A lot of what we find ourselves doing is providing resources for others, whether they’re scientists in the San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN), life science marketing professionals, or any of our network of around 9,000 biotechnology professionals. Are we good people? Sure, but we also see benefits from sharing daily, which gives us a business case to continue. We get new leads, we learn from our peers and our clients, and we get many perks from being connected, such as media access to conferences, etc. In our two years, we’ve definitely learned the benefits from sharing, much as a two year old learns that sharing a toy is the right thing to do.

Learn from your mistakes. I love telling people about the mistakes I made early on, so we can all learn from them. Here is one: I set up a social network for biotech marketers, thinking it would be a great way for us to share experiences and connect. What I didn’t realize in these early days is that many of these free standing networks take a LOT of effort to get going, because they don’t become useful until a minimum number of people join, something called the network effect. So, the group didn’t ever take off, but we did succeed in creating a great group on LinkedIn, where we can take advantage of the fact that so many biotech marketers are already there. We learned from this mistake, and make sure that our clients don’t make them as well. We’ve encapsulated these ideas in our STIR Social Media system to help life science companies create successful campaigns and applications.

You can’t do it all by yourself. We’re lucky to have many great partners who help us to meet our clients’ needs, including Stinson Brand Innovation and WHITECOAT Strategies. We’ve also been very lucky to hire Rebecca Watson-Beattie as Business Development manager, she has brought a wealth of experience and focus to Comprendia. If you’ve met her you know, she’s a great asset and a pleasure to work with. We’ll also be bringing on Julie Mazziotta soon as our WordPress Web and Social Media Manager. Julie’s web, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media experience will help us and our clients to grow. Related to the first point, through our network, we continue to meet exceptional companies and individuals to work with and are very excited about the capabilities we will be able to offer our clients in the months and years to come.

Saying ‘No’ can be empowering. Every small business goes through growing pains–what should our focus be, and which projects should we take on? Like a two year old, we are learning that there are choices we can make that will affect our lives. Sometimes this means saying ‘no’ to some project areas and focusing on where we can have the biggest impact. This strategy benefits everyone, as we prosper, and our clients get the best we have to offer. So, while we don’t say ‘no’ quite as much as a terrible two year old, we hope that by continuing to focus on our strengths, that we’ll be able to help companies focus on theirs as well. If you’ve been reading this blog, hopefully you know, but to clarify, we are a full service marketing firm specializing in web-based tools and social media.

What we can do is quite remarkable. We hope that by building Comprendia and the SDBN from the ground up, you can see what is possible, even for a small outfit. In our Bootstrapping Biotech event with the SDBN last year, we talked about all the cheap or free tools which empower small companies, and our dream is that our success can help yours as well. Like a two year old, we can think about what it was like to crawl, and walk, and now how great it is to now be able to run. Running along with others is perhaps the most fun of all, and our dream is that you’ll all realize how much is possible with today’s tools, and leverage them for your benefit.

It’s a big, wonderful world we live in. These past two years have been nothing short of fantastic. We’ve met so many great people, from famous scientists, to amazing entrepreneurs (latest here), to professionals who are making the best of this bad economy. The number of fantastic life science and biotechnology product and application ideas we’ve heard about over these two years leaves us in awe, and like a two year old we’re anxious to explore and see what’s around the next corner. We sincerely hope that, also like a two year old, we’ve been able to soak up a fraction of your collective knowledge and make sense of it in a way that benefits the community.

Like a two year old, we will grow a lot over the next few years, perhaps in ways we cannot imagine right now. We’ll be unveiling some great client projects over the next year, which we think will open up some new doors in life science marketing. Stay tuned!

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Comprendia Turns Two! What We’ve Learned, and Are Still Learning… http://bit.ly/avg7j6