Recently, science blogging’s clear leader, ScienceBlogs, with up to 1.2 million unique monthly visitors (estimate, April, Compete.com) lost several top science bloggers due to their initial decision to allow Pepsico, Inc. to host a blog called Food Frontiers on the site (it has since been taken off the site). Although the blog was intended to showcase real Pepsico scientists, several of the bloggers felt the decision to be disingenuous, perhaps due to its ‘corporate speak’ feel and ties between soda drinks and bad health. While it is unfortunate that so many bloggers left, there are important lessons that can be learned by life science companies, who also need to determine how best to leverage social media to realize business objectives.

Transparency is not enough. Much has been written about PepsiGate, I will not get go into detail here, but great reviews can be found by searching Delicious for the PepsiGate or sbfail tags. Basically, ScienceBlogs founders made the assumption that a blog about food from Pepsico, if clearly defined as such, would be acceptable on the site, which had built a reputation of scientific integrity through content from world class bloggers. Our STIR Social Media system describes why this is assumption is in error by defining four qualities which a successful scientific social media campaign must have: Sticky, Transparent, Intuitive, and Resonating. The theme of the Food Frontiers blog, Pepsi-backed information about nutritional science, did not fulfill the last quality, it did not resonate with the science bloggers. A corollary to this fact is that it likely would not have rung true with ScienceBlogs readers. Finding a theme that resonates with life scientists is very important, which is why we do in-depth surveys of them for most of the social media campaigns we launch.

Think strategically, not tactically. We have some great life science company examples we point to during our social media workshops and training. However, we also see a tendency towards thinking tactically, a ‘if we build it they will come’ mentality. In other words, we see marketers that think that by using their brand’s influence they’ll build a successful blog, Facebook page, etc., relying on tactics rather than strategies. By using social media, you will be expecting more from your customers, you will need to motivate them to interact, so you need to understand them better. One of my sayings is ‘There’s a thin line between a successful social media campaign and a pyramid scheme.’ This means that you need to understand what motivates everyone in the campaign, and leverage these needs wisely, otherwise it could all fall like a house of cards. In the case of ScienceBlogs, the bloggers were motivated to write for the blog because it helped them to establish scientific integrity. By seemingly compromising that integrity with the Pepsico blog, the bloggers saw their own scientific integrity being compromised. A strong strategy, and perhaps creating and adhering to a mission statement, would have prevented the ScienceBlogs incident, as they would have realized having a corporate blog on the site would not help them to meet their goals.

ScienceBlogs gets many things right. Read science communication and blogging thought leader Bora Zivcovik’s ‘farewell to ScienceBlogs’ post which also covers the history of the organization and their amazing reach and influence. From international legal action in Libya, to education of the U.S. Senate, to stellar Google search rankings and coverage by mainstream media outlets, ScienceBlogs is by many accounts a huge success. The creators, Seed Media, a NYC-based media and technology company dedicated to advancing science, and publisher of Seed Magazine, a ‘not-your-father’s’ version of Scientific American, clearly understood the infrastructure and marketing needed for success. Unfortunately, when PepsiGate broke, it was this widespread coverage, and the fact that each blogger could speak freely, that made the story’s coverage reach epic proportions. However, the site is the first of its kind and changed scientific communication as we know it, and hopefully they’ll learn from PepsiGate and come out stronger. Their model and progress should continue to be watched by life science companies.

To know, you must do. I was approached about six months ago by Seed Media to blog for an endeavor called ScienceWide which would sell advertising space on smaller science-based sites. I don’t want to get into too many details, but some aspects of their model bothered me, and I didn’t agree to provide novel content for them (but gave them suggestions and free rein to link to my content). I had similar feelings when dealing with San Diego’s now defunct blog-style news website SDNN.com, that they just didn’t ‘get’ some of the innuendos of social media that are crucial for success. As we point out in our workshops and training, a big part of understanding social media is to do it yourself–it can be a personal effort such as a twitter account you keep based on one of your hobbies. I do not know of any of the Seed Media management on Twitter, blogs etc. (I may be wrong) and perhaps if they had been more involved in the life science social media scene they’d have foreseen PepsiGate. I had this ‘aha’ about two years ago as an outsider, and have worked hard to provide value to the life science social media community, gaining much from them in the process as well. I encourage all of the life science marketers to do the same, and think that they will benefit as I do.

Although PepsiGate was unfortunate, it is a great example to learn from, both the good and the bad. What I find truly inspiring is that I see several of the incredibly smart science bloggers have gained enormous influence from the experience and will apply what they’ve learned about media and marketing to endeavors of their own. Science journalist Carl Zimmer has created a list of former ScienceBlogs bloggers whereabouts, so you can keep up with them. Also, while ScienceBlogs may have stumbled, the fact that they’re already established means that they’ll likely be far ahead of new endeavors for some time. Keep that in mind for your company’s strategy…as Ries & Trout’s first law of marketing states, it’s better to be first than it is to be better!

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Lately I’ve been disturbed, and frankly quite irritated, by a trend in which more individuals, either acting on their own or on behalf of their company, frequently send personal email blasts with no easy way to opt out. These individuals are likely empowered by new tools such as LinkedIn and customer relationship management (CRM) software, which make it easy to send emails to a large set of contacts. However, this practice can be damaging to you and your company, and I’d like to point out the reasons you should think twice before sending personal email blasts.

Violation of your company’s privacy policy. Having been in the marketing departments of large companies, I appreciate that privacy is a serious issue. I heard a story reminiscent of the “Hatfield and McCoys” family feud where someone harassed a neighbor by signing them up online to be mailed hundreds of catalogs. Because it is now so easy to find and abuse personal contact information, the federal government has realized the need for stronger online privacy regulations, you can learn more at the Better Business Bureau Online’s website. In California, every website which collects personal information requires a privacy policy, and if you are using LinkedIn or your CRM to send mass emails, you may be violating your company’s regulations.

Making your contacts’ day harder. There are myriad strategies which help people to clear out their email inbox to help them be more productive. By sending your contacts unwanted emails which they can’t opt out of, you are making their life harder. They need to decide whether to mark you as a spammer, risking missing important emails you send, or determine how to politely decline the emails. Your contacts are one of your most valuable asset, and the absolute last thing you want to is be seen as making their day harder.

You may be crying wolf. I will admit it…I have encountered the decision of either telling one of my contacts to stop sending me unsolicited emails a few times a week…or to mark the person as spam…and I did the latter. I may be missing emails from that person now, which is too bad, but they have my contact information and will call if it is important. Don’t put yourself in this situation, of having people ignoring or tagging your emails as spam because you are sending too many that are unrelated. As we talk about in our social media training and workshops, in this new media age it’s ‘not all about you’ and constantly sending mass, self-serving emails will brand you as someone who has little to offer. It may be more efficacious to build a big network or following and use more ‘soft sell’ methods like status updates to promote yourself.

It’s easy to do it right. It is very easy to send emails including an easy ‘opt out’ using your CRM or email communication applications such as constant contact or mailchimp. We send most of our notifications to our contacts through our email application, always with the option to opt out. I will have to admit that LinkedIn makes it really convenient for us to send email announcements at times, but we don’t feel as though we abuse it. However, who knows, maybe some people are irritated with us (if so, leave a comment below ;). We should migrate LinkedIn contacts to an opt out version of communication (or hopefully LinkedIn and our email application will talk to each other someday soon).

Bottom line? Don’t assume everyone on your contact list wants to hear from you often and indefinitely. Sending large scale personal emails on behalf of your company can negatively affect you both. What’s really dangerous about it is that if you damage your reputation, even on behalf of your company, it will follow you even after you’ve moved on.

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We stress the importance of good content in our training and workshops, it is the cornerstone of a successful life science or biotechnology social media strategy. Content can be fully original, such as a blog post written by one of your company’s scientists about their research, or you can share links, news, presentations from others on third party applications such as Twitter or LinkedIn, as long as you credit them properly. Both original and shared content benefit from reviewing updates from the web or social networks regularly, and a good way to do this is through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. RSS feeds do the work for you, telling you when content all over the web is updated, and we can create a customized feed for you based on your needs. See this example of a drug discovery blogs feed we created, or the San Diego Biotech News feed. The information can also be sent as email. Just fill out the Custom Life Science RSS form and we’ll do the rest! We think you’ll also find that a custom feed will help you stay on top of your industry, whether you’re in R&D or Marketing. As always, contact us if you have any questions.

We hear from life science marketers that they ‘don’t have time’ for social media. We think that for many reasons, they should ‘make’ time, as the benefits are far reaching, from reinforcing your brand to getting input on product development. However, we are realistic and know that integrating these habits into your routine will take time, so we’ve created this list that will help you to leverage life science social media by spending just ten minutes a day.

Set up custom RSS feeds. We’ve talked about the power of RSS feeds to deliver customized content from all over the internet, from research publications to company websites to blogs. Set up RSS feeds and use the information to tweet or blog about, as well as to stay on top of what is going on in your industry and with your customers. You can browse this content from an RSS reader or set up customized emails. Need help? We can set up a customized feed and daily emails for you quickly and affordably, check out this example of a drug discovery blogs RSS we set up. We’ll set it up for you, adjust it if necessary, and give you all the information you need to adjust it in the future as needed. As we’ll cover in our July 28th Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2, great content is the cornerstone of a winning social media strategy.

Repurpose. Different social media applications have different functions and audiences, so there is no harm in sharing a link on, for example, both Twitter and Facebook. In our workshops, we’ve also talked about ‘recycling’ content from your website or blog. Resources, news, and user-generated content such as FAQs can be used. Of course, don’t be too redundant, and don’t consider that posting information about product discounts, etc. is necessarily interesting to your audience all the time.

Automate. Related to repurposing is the fact that you can use tools and tricks to automatically post status updates to more than one application, which is handy. For example, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all ‘play nicely’ with each other, and you can set them up so that you can post an update on one and feed it to the other applications. In addition, you can use great tools like HootSuite to post to multiple accounts and also schedule updates for later. We do think that there is a lot of value in logging in and browsing your network or followers updates, but to begin with, you can do this weekly instead of daily to save time (see next item).

Use calendar reminders. Some aspects of social media require maintenance, such as growing your Twitter followers or your LinkedIn network. These things can’t be done all at once, so we suggest setting weekly calendar reminders for tasks such as connecting with new people you’ve met on LinkedIn or using Twitter searches to find new life scientists to follow. If you work at a larger company, you may need to aggregate all of your activity using RSS feeds, Friendfeed, or Hubspot, and depending on the size of your company, you’ll want to review these daily or weekly. Also, reviewing metrics such as engagements or return on investment (ROI) is important as well, and is likely best done weekly or monthly. If you want more information about the strategies behind these tactics, check out our workshops and training.

Use the force. One of the great things about social media is that you can find great people to follow, share content from, and emulate. Once you find a few ‘Jedi masters’ you can save time because they will serve as ‘channels’ of information for you to learn from and share. We hope that you’ll consider this blog as a channel of information for life science and biotech marketing and subscribe to updates.

The workflow we suggest follows the order of this list. Start with good content, and the rest should naturally flow, to the last item in which you’ll hopefully be engaging with the thought leaders in your area. We hope that you’ll find so much value in these ten minutes that you’ll branch out more and spend more time leveraging social media. What techniques have worked for you to get the most out of the time you spend using social media? We’d love to hear, please leave a comment below.

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Twitter is not just for breakfast any more. Life scientists and companies are using it to learn and share information, and there are likely a few thousand life scientists and more than 100 related companies using it. One of the really great things about twitter is that you can find connections based on the content they are tweeting, and you don’t need to know them to follow and vice versa. Whether you’re in marketing or do research, the value lies in following a good quantity of high quality life scientists, and having them follow you back, and here are some tips and tricks for achieving this goal.

Follow more life science twitterers. We know purists who think that ‘if you tweet, followers will come,’ they want to grow ‘organically.’ However, if you look at the vast majority of twitterers, their number of followers is roughly equal to the number they follow. So, if you want 1000 followers, you’ll likely need to follow 1000 (and I think is the minimum number you need to get any real traction on Twitter). The good news is that there are many great ways to find life science twitterers, including:

• David Bradley’s Scientist Twibe–600 scientists (perhaps not all life scientists). Follow these scientists, add yourself to this list, and browse sites like wefollow and follow people and add yourself to the appropriate list(s).
• Search Twitter for terms you’re interested (e.g., RNAi, epigenetics) and follow twitterers in search results. Some twitter applications like twhirl allow you to add searches to your stream, making it easy to follow as you go.
• Conference hashtags. Tweets from most life science conferences include a ‘hashtag’, e.g. #asmgm for the ASM General Meeting. Search for the hashtags and follow twitterers.
• Find a great life science twitterer and follow who they follow. Their list can be found on their profile page by clicking on the ‘following’ link. Don’t follow their followers, as these lists are usually a lot more noisier than the list they are following.

Note: You shouldn’t follow more than 100 people a day, as Twitter may flag you as a spammer.

Provide good content. Twitter is used to share news and information related to your interests, be they personal or professional. To get people to follow, you need to give people something interesting to look for. We’re big proponents of using RSS for this function, you can even set it up to send yourself a daily email of customized content from across the web. Of course, you can also promote yourself, as long as you follow our 90/10 rule: provide 90% selfless content, and 10% self-promoting content.

Engage. It’s not enough to just follow and tweet good content. You also need to engage with the life science community. It should come naturally, if not you’re not following the right people! Retweet interesting content, reply to twitterers who capture your attention, or just say hi. I think you’ll find that you’ll even make some friends! They don’t call it SOCIAL media for nothing!

Think holistically. Most social media applications work best synergistically with other tools. A twitter account works much better if you also have a blog which you can tweet about, for example. Also, it’s a good idea to get to know the twitterers you follow by leaving comments on their blogs. The general theme is, be a part of the community! You’ll find you know more about your field and the world in general by following Twitter. You may not notice it right away, but you’ll be getting ‘Tweet Cred’ and your number of followers will grow.

Lighten up. There are many brands, life science and otherwise, on Twitter. The most successful ones show they’re human and tweet some personal information. Regardless of your motives, it’s a good idea for many reasons to show you’re human. For one, it makes the experience more enjoyable. It doesn’t have to be anything unprofessional, it can simply be commenting on the weather, for example. As we’ve pointed out, engaging is key, and nobody wants to interact with a robot! You also may find you share hobbies, etc. with other life science twitterers, allowing you meet those you might otherwise would not have.

This list is good to get you going on getting more followers and mastering twitter, and we also offer Twitter training and as part as our Workshop 3: The Rule of 3’s for 3rd Party Applications: Strategies, Tactics, and Metrics. Contact us for more information, and subscribe to our blog so you’ll get this information in your inbox hot off the press.

Note: The Twitter ‘mascot’ is a blue bird, so a blue dodo seemed fitting for life science. Get it?

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Almost every life science company we talk to about web 2.0 and social media has the same question: what’s the return on investment (ROI)? We’ve discussed that the ROI equation for social media strategies and tactics is the same, but that the ‘expense’ and ‘payback’ calculations will likely be different. In this post, we’ll discuss two reports which show that web 2.0 sites have increased traffic and engagement, and that customers who are engaged buy more. Together, they present a strong argument that adding web 2.0 features can directly and positively impact a company’s sales.

Web 2.0 sites are dynamic and interactive, and include sites which the user can add content to such as blogs, forums, and wikis. The first report we’ll discuss is titled ‘Traffic metrics and Web 2.0-ness‘ and it was published in Online Information Review from a group in Taiwan. They surveyed the online habits of about 1000 people and correlated metrics such as sites visited, page views per site, and duration per page on site with the degree of ‘Web 2.0-ness’ a website had.

The researchers found a positive correlation between the Web 2.0-ness of a site and users’ understanding of its content and the number of visitors to the site. In other words, adding web 2.0 elements and more content leads to stronger user engagement with the site and a related increased traffic to the site. One interesting corollary they discuss is the ‘double jeopardy’ small companies face: fewer products=fewer pages=less engagement. We definitely see this with smaller life science and biotech companies we talk to, and we have many ideas to help them overcome this issue.

You may be asking yourself, does increased engagement mean more sales? The second report is from Gallup and is titled ‘Customer Engagement–What’s Your Engagement Ratio?’ (Note: the report is a bit of an ‘infomercial’ but has good information). Gallup first looked at what they call ‘World Class’ companies, which rank in their 90th percentile, to determine whether they engage their customers more than the others. The result was shocking–the ratio of ‘Fully Engaged’ to ‘Actively Disengaged’ customers was ten-fold more for the World Class companies compared to the others. So, top performing companies have a higher ‘engagement ratio’–is this directly related to improved sales? Gallup has found through many examples and industries that emotionally engaged customers spend more and are retained more easily. Moreover, they’ve seen that companies can improve their business performance by increasing their engagement ratio. See the report for more details, as some of the details behind the statistics are not given and thus hard to summarize, but Gallup is a highly respected company and I’m sure more can be learned from them if you need more information.

Taken together, these two reports show that adding more web 2.0 features to your life science company website will lead directly to increased sales. What may be more exciting is that life science and biotechnology offers many interesting ways to add content to your site, and we’ve discussed that you may be closer than you think to making these changes.

Want to learn how to get there even faster? Attend our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2: The 4 B’s of First Party Applications interactive webinar. We’ll talk about web 2.0, blogs, forums, and wikis, and how to generate engaging content for life scientists. Also, check out our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Training page, we offer training and workshops on almost every topic, contact us if you don’t see what you need!

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