About six months ago, Andrew Maynard (@2020Science) and Mike Chelen (@MikeChelen) analyzed the influence of the then 400 ‘Scientwists’ on Twitter compiled by David Bradley (@sciencebase). Since then, I’ve wanted to do something similar for Biotech (Biotwech?) Twitterers, but the application they used no longer works in batch.

Mike Chelen came to my rescue and created an API which will work in batch for Klout, a similar application which gives Twitter influence along with other metrics and classifications for user types. Using the list of users from the Biotech Twibe, including the top 25 influencers from the Wefollow Biotech tag, I created the bubble chart visualization using the ‘Many Eyes’ application. The size of each users’ bubble, which is directly proportional to their influence, is based on the Klout score, which ranges from 0 to 100 and is based on 25 metrics including the size of your ‘engaged’ network, retweets, and number of Twitter lists.

You can view the full Twitter Biotech Influence data set to see more details, and even interact more with the visualization as well. Those of us who are in the Twitter space will not be surprised at most who are in the list of the top twenty, but there are also some interesting observations to be made. Because Twibes are not based on the content a user tweets, there can be some spurious results. For example, while Wise_Diva is certainly influential, she rarely tweets about Biotech, but since it is one of her interests, she joined the Twibe.

Someday soon, hopefully we’ll have applications which will take tweet content into the equation, and we’ll be able to find the key influencers based on keywords (currently, on Klout, if you log in and go to the ‘dashboard’ you can search for influencers on some topics–biology and pharmacy seem to be the closest matches). Klout does list the content of a users’ tweets, but using this information directly may not accurately portend their tweet content. For example, Sally Church aka @MaverickNY is the top ‘true’ biotech influencer, but her content is listed as cancer, FDA, Google, iPhone, Boston, and social media. We do know, however, that she tweets often about Biotech, but just does not use the term. (And, would you move to Boston already Sally since it’s clear you love the place?) So, likely the content algorithms will need to be very smart, or we’ll need to do some curation. Also, you should consider that if one of your goals is to be an influencer for a certain keyword, that you should use the keyword in your tweets, as you will not always be able to count on human curation.

Another interesting trend is the fact that the top influencers are categorized by Klout as personas, activists, and connectors. While the Klout website doesn’t describe how these categorizations are made, the descriptions they give are listed in the table below. The Network Score, Amplification Score, and True Reach values were capricious, with several being zero for many accounts, so we did not analyze them (but you can visualize them on the Many Eyes site using the menu on the lower left). Klout appeared to be better than tools like Wefollow at discerning between active and inactive accounts, as the latter has at least two inactive accounts ranked highly, including @IamBiotech which is #1. However, some of the top ranking accounts, notably @sdbn at #14 which I manage, are partial bots (mine fed from RSS), and Klout seems to not discern that these accounts are not 100% ‘human.’

Another interesting observation is that 12 of the 16 top influencers’ ‘known’ genders are female, or 75%. Are women better at fostering microblogging networks? This finding is particularly interesting in light of the recent reports that science blogging networks have significantly more male than female bloggers. While it is tempting to speculate why, it should be noted that Twitter users are 60% female. However, it’s been shown that men are likely to get more followers.

Surely I’ve missed some biotech Tweeters, I thought about adding them separately, but my vestigial scientific tendencies told me that it would make the ‘experiment’ less reproducible (also why I left Wise_Diva in). The Twibes application is the only one I’ve found that will output a list of users–Wefollow and Twitter Lists do not. Please add yourself to the Biotech Twibe and I will redo this visualization in a month or so. I’d like also to make some tag clouds of all of the tweets, especially the influencers, but alas I can’t find a tool for that.

I’d like to give special recognition to Mike Chelen for creating the Klout API. Often I get frustrated with analyzing social media data, and the scientists who ‘get’ social media are really fantastic resources. Mike did this for us for free, but you should check out his Linkedin profile and consider hiring him for your project. The intersection of social media and science is one of the most fascinating aspects of my job, and I think exciting things are on the horizon. For a teaser, see how some scientists are using a Bioinformatics/statistics program to create word clouds of Pubmed abstracts. Of course, the Batch Klout API he developed can be used to analyze any list…have at it!

Finally, why is this study important for life science and biotech companies? Let’s say we’re able to find the top influencer for PCR, lung cancer, kinase research etc. These accounts, whether they’re individuals or brands, will be able to spread a message quickly and effectively. Of course, the issue of the ‘separation of church and state’ in media and advertising will still have a play, but we’ve talked about how this can be done carefully by companies. Indeed, Klout is already thinking about this for the larger brands, shouldn’t you be thinking about it for your life science brand?

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Who Are The Top Biotech Influencers on Twitter? http://bit.ly/bio_inf

We’re starting something new here, inspired by our friends Mike Spear and Walter Jessen, who each provide posts with useful links and summaries regularly. Our ‘flavor’ will be focused on life science & biotech marketing and social media, all meant to keep you up to speed on the interesting things we’ve found during the week. We’re documenting all of the links on the bookmark sharing site Delicious under the ‘soundbytes‘ tag, so you can always reference them (and even sign up for RSS updates–look for the orange RSS symbol). You’ll note that there are many bookmarks there now…we’ve had this in the works for a while. Without further ado, here are our first Sound Bytes!

1. Google Announces ‘Caffeine,’ a new ‘as it happens’ search engine feature.

This link’s a bit outdated, but very important, so I’m including it. Google may be feeling pressure from more timely searches available from Twitter, and introduced this new feature which indexes a ‘subsection of the internet’ quickly. What does this mean for you? We talk about in our workshops and training that search engines love dynamic websites, and this new feature turns this affection up to 11. Which ‘subsection of the internet’ do they index quickly? No one outside Google really knows, but I’m guessing blogs and other social media applications are being indexed quickly. For the Comprendia blog, our posts often ‘hit’ the first page of our target Google search engine keywords within minutes of posting. They may fade away depending on their popularity, but we get great ‘Google Juice’ almost immediately. Meaning? Start that blog yesterday, and post often!

2. More fallout from ScienceBlogs’ ‘PepsiGate’: New Wired Science Bloggers and Bora Zivkovic heads to Scientific American.

We covered ‘PepsiGate,’ Seed Media’s unfortunate episode hiring Pepsico bloggers for ScienceBlogs, and how many bloggers left the popular site. Since that time, many players have ‘stepped to the plate’ to offer these bloggers a home, and Wired Science is one of them. Their effort is certainly one to watch, as is the more ‘home grown’ network Scientopia. This week, the highly respected ex-ScienceBlogs blogger Bora Zivcovik announced he’s helping Scientific American launch a new science blogging network. What does this mean for you, the life science marketer? Advertising on these new sites is definitely a possibility, but I’d like you to think beyond this type of broadcast advertising and think about how you could help these sites in a more context-specific manner. It’s very ironic that the addition of Pepsico to the ScienceBlogs roster caused this cascade of events–if Seed Media had instead chosen a life science company-hosted blog, the outcome would have been very different!

3. Creating Social Media Business Guidelines.

We covered this topic in our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2, and as things usually go in this fast paced area, a few great resources have come out since then. Check out this post, it’s a gold mine!

4. RSS feed for Life Technologies Social Media.

Interested in seeing how LIFE is doing social media? We’ve aggregated all of their accounts into a single RSS feed, allowing you to view it in an RSS reader or get email updates. We also created a Twitter list so you can follow them easily. They’re the most active company in life science social media, incorporating many brands, you can learn from them by watching what they’re doing.

That’s all for now, folks, we’ll make another life science marketing mix tape for you in about a week, and sign up for email updates so you won’t miss anything! Stay tuned also for Sound Bytes Videos with tips and tricks from our workshops and training.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 9/16/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes0916

As consultants, we see that some of our life science and biotech clients are interested in learning how to ‘DIY’ (Do-It-Yourself) marketing and public relations items that were traditionally outsourced. We realize this need for smaller businesses who may have more limited budgets. We offer our suggestions below with the caveat that professional public relations (PR) and marketing firms do have a lot to offer as they have the experience and connections, and as we point out below, a sustained PR campaign requires significant effort. Our guidelines for sending a biotech press release are listed in chronological order.

Start with a message and a plan. The purpose of public relations is to help your company realize its objectives by being perceived in a certain way. For an example, a biotech company may want to be perceived as an excellent drug discovery collaborator so that they will be approached by potential partners. Of course, the perception cannot be far from reality. Once this message and its objectives are clear, a plan should be developed to meet this goal, and it will include other aspects of marketing such as conferences and product launches.

Form relationships with the media. It’s important to start this process early, as of course relationships take time. Due to the changes in the media landscape, publications are now more ‘hungry’ for biotech and scientific information, so they may welcome your ideas more readily. Part of your PR plan should include target publications in which editorial coverage (or ‘earned media’) will help you to achieve your goal. You’re likely also advertising in these publications, so ask your salesperson to connect you with the editorial staff. It also helps to review the editorial calendars of these publications, so that you can coordinate your schedule with theirs.

Make the release newsworthy. One of the results of the changes in the media landscape is that now that everyone can send a press release…everyone does, flooding the internet with commercial ‘news.’ Ask yourself before sending the press release, is it news? Putting out a string of press releases does not entail a PR strategy. If you decide your release does count as news, tie it into biotech business trends and life science research news. Send personal emails to your top targets, explaining to them why the story would be good for their publication. Or, better yet, call them; the most sought after journalists get many emails, calling may be a way to stand out. Consider embargoing the press release to your top targets as well, giving them time to cover the story in more depth, although this is not a guarantee you’ll get good coverage.

Use a press release distribution service. We’ve seen life science companies take the ‘DIY’ concept to the extreme, defining a ‘press release’ as a blurb on their website and an email blast. While you may have a terrific network and a great distribution list (which we’ve warned against abusing), for the time being, distribution services such as Marketwire (which is the service we suggest) will get your release in front of many people and also help you with SEO (search engine optimization). The cost will be between $500 and $1000, depending on the length and options you choose. If it sounds too expensive for the number of releases you plan to send, then you may want to consider that you’re sending too many.

Consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Is it your company’s goal to be the leading provider of kinase assays? Make sure these keywords appear prominently in your release, and that there are links to your website as well. As with many other marketing activities, we’re big proponents of using Google Analytics/Adwords data to find what your customers or target audience are searching for. This will help you to get the most out of the ‘Google Juice’ you’ll get out of your release, and many of the distribution services also have SEO tools to help you.

Use social media. You knew this suggesting was coming, if you’ve been reading this blog. Build your social media network so that you can send the information to people who care about your company’s news. As always, engage, don’t broadcast, and see our social media training and workshops if you need help. Using social media for PR could be an entire blog post so we’ll keep this short in anticipation of that…

Things will continue to change, and it’s possible that in a year or so we’ll adjust this list, perhaps making ‘social media PR’ #1. One thing that will likely remain the same is the importance of relationships in getting attention for your company’s news. As the ‘DIY PR Pro’ for your company, you should now consider this part of your daily routine!

To share this post easily, cut and paste: How To DIY Your Biotech Press Release http://bit.ly/dk6K7n

Comprendia has been invited to present a social media workshop for the chemical industry by Informex, the leading meeting place for buyers and sellers of high-value chemistry for a broad range of applications. Learn more from Informex’s press release about the social media webinar for the chemicals industry, and register here. If you’re interested in hiring Comprendia to train your group, see our life science social media training and workshop opportunities.