You may know that through our work at Comprendia or the San Diego Biotechnology Network that we often need to get in touch with people we don’t know well or at all, whether it’s finding a speaker for the SDBN, or doing business development for a client. We like to think we get pretty good results by following a few simple rules, which are listed below:

• Do your homework. We all get irritating emails every day, from all-out spam to people who clearly don’t understand our business or needs. These people didn’t do their homework, and whether they’re guessing that I need to spice up my love life or to optimize my website, it doesn’t matter, we ignore and are sometimes even offended by these messages. When it comes to ‘cold’ emailing, less is more: better to spend an hour researching a prospect and emailing them a thoughtful and personalized message than to blindly email 10 at a time, something we’ve warned about earlier.
• What’s in it for them? This is where many fail, and it’s funny because it’s so obvious when you’re on the other side. You need to give the person a benefit to the action you are asking them to take. Otherwise, why act? Everyone is busy. Tell them in simple terms how working with you will make their life easier. Not their company, them personally, as our instincts kick in when benefits are expressed in this way. You may need to be creative if what you’re asking has no immediate benefit to them (e.g., obtaining information). Perhaps if they help you now, you can promise to help them later. I sometimes leverage the SDBN or my large network in these situations. I’ve also found that the offer of a free lunch is often irresistible to Ph.D.’s at any age (grad school turns on those genes).
• Don’t be a stranger. Sure, this post is about contacting people you don’t know well…or do you? Any way you can put yourself in context for the person will help, whether it be common LinkedIn connections, interests, or even geography. Of course, the chance of having connections in common is made greater with a larger network, so be sure to grow it as well, both virtually and ‘in real life’ by attending networking events. If you’re lucky enough to get someone to introduce you, that’s even better, just remember the whole karma thing and return the favor (or pay it forward).
• Flattery will get you everywhere. This year I struggled to get a speaker for an SDBN event from a certain company. I sent no less than five emails to people trying to get someone from the senior management to speak. What worked in the end? I contacted a VP myself and indicated how much we wanted them as a speaker. Presumably, the person was flattered that I asked, and even though they were at a high level, they acted on my email when people who were lower on the totem pole were ‘too busy’ for my request.
• Put the ball in YOUR court. One common mistake is to setting yourself up for failure by asking the email recipient to ‘respond if they are interested.’ This works sometimes, but a more foolproof way is to indicate that you will follow up with a phone call. Don’t have their number? Here’s a secret: you can call most companies’ main line and use their directory get to the person you’re interested in. This way, you’re not at a dead end if the person doesn’t reply. Of course, always keep the phone call polite and short if they didn’t reply, as you still may be ‘off the mark’ as to their needs or interests.

We hope these guidelines will help you next time you need to contact someone you don’t know well with a request. As with much of our advice here, rely on feedback to what you’re doing, and if you’re still not getting good results, consider that your product needs improvement (even if that product is you!).

To share this post easily, cut and paste: How To Get Great Results From An Email To (Almost) Anyone http://bit.ly/bPxYBj

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media:

1. Life Technologies launches Invitrogen Select, a publication alert aggregator.

As we’ve talked about here, research publications are the ‘glue’ that tie life science researchers together, and LIFE is ingeniously tapping into this with it’s new Invitrogen Select website and service. Researchers can sign up for publication alerts in a variety of fields, and LIFE adds an unobtrusive text advertisement at the end of the publication titles. It’s a nice tool for researchers because it is difficult to set up Pubmed alerts which all appear in one email.

2. How to build a social media cheat sheet for any topic.

This is brilliant and self explanatory, I highly suggest doing it to become an expert on any life science topic and/or to generate content for your social media campaigns. If you don’t feel as though you have the time, check out our Custom RSS service, we can generate daily emails for you.

3. The buzz is all about Quora right now…

Quora is a site everyone’s talking about, it is a ‘clearing house’ of questions and answers for any topic. It looks like it will be good for finding thought leaders/KOLs, information, and to establish yourself in an area.

4. LinkedIn Labs launches.

Looks like LinkedIn is launching a bunch of new search tools. This is hot off the presses, I haven’t had time to look into it, as always help yourself! LinkedIn is a treasure trove of information, having more access to it is bound to be very useful.

All links can be found under the soundbytes tag on Delicious, and sign up for Comprendia blog email updates to get our mix tapes delivered to your inbox.
To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Links and Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 10/14/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes1014

Facebook is everywhere, from the movie box office, to news about frequent announcements and changes, to your friends and family who are likely interacting there more and more frequently. Facebook’s leveraging its 500 million users to become the gorilla who can sit anywhere it pleases. You may have dismissed it as not being useful for your life science business, but Facebook’s users, and the changes that the company has been making, are affecting many current and future aspects of the web. Below we outline the changes that are most likely to affect life science businesses.

Mark Zuckerberg describes the ‘heart’ of the important changes at the April f8 conference (Facebook’s conference for developers), establishment of an ‘open graph.’ What is it? Zuckerberg explains that before the described changes were made, many different applications were mapping out the connections between people and their interests–for example Yelp maps out restaurant patron experiences shared between friends, and Pandora maps out music interests. At f8 a series of applications were launched which will help to connect much of this information, using Facebook as a hub, to create what he calls the open graph.

Perhaps the most obvious change you’ve noticed as a user is that the ‘Like’ button is showing up everywhere on websites (we even installed one in the sidebar here). This change is made possible with the new applications Facebook has made available, allowing almost any web entity to be ‘liked’ and tracked. In addition, websites can also use a Facebook login rather than an individual one, making it much easier for them to join a website.

I highly suggest listening to Mark Zuckerberg’s f8 keynote speech, as it underlines the broader, optimistic implications for ‘changing the web,’ but it should be pointed out that some see it as a ploy for Facebook to ‘take over’ the web. Somewhat quietly during this time, Facebook forced users to convert all of their interests into ‘Likes’, which served to standardize the information more. For example, my favorite movie is Moonstruck, so I was ‘forced’ to ‘Like’ that page. This is pretty powerful if you think about it–if there is ever a sequel to the movie, Facebook will be THE place to market it, as they can easily market to their exact demographic (not to mention the ability for them to do market research beforehand). In a sense, with this change Facebook made an important step in them ‘owning’ a lot of important real estate on the web.

Some of the other changes Facebook made this year also far reaching and important to note. One is the introduction of ‘Community Pages,’ which pull content from Wikipedia. What does this mean for life science companies? Well, it means that if you have a wikipedia entry, you now have a facebook page which you may have no control over, as wikipedia is crowd sourced (e.g., anybody can edit). For an example, check out Thermo Fisher’s community page.

Also, this week Facebook launched updates to their groups which will allow more interaction, functioning as Yahoo! or Ning groups, but in some ways easier because so many people belong to Facebook. Because this announcement is so new, it’s hard to say how it will affect life science companies. For now, we still recommend that a Facebook Page be made for brands, and you can check out early reactions to the announcement as well.

You may still be wondering what this has to do with your life science business. Consider this: Facebook’s inclusion of wikipedia entries means that there is now a MAP Kinase page. Consider my movie example above–because of Facebook’s reach, they may ‘own’ this on the web, giving them some control, but also allowing you to tap into MAPK aficionados. Now, take it one step further and imagine that all of the products you have related to MAPK could be linked to this entry. Wow. Are you starting to see how powerful these changes are? It’s all part of what’s called the semantic web, and its being thought of from both the life science side and the commerce side–see the Linked Open Data and the Linked Open Commerce websites.

What should you be doing now? I suggest scheduling a meeting with your IT/Web group to discuss the implications for your product catalog. Are there Facebook applications which will help you to engage and learn about your customers more? Check Facebook for community pages related to your company, and replace them with ‘real’ pages which you’ll have more control over. Is Facebook starting to ‘own’ a piece of the web that you are interested in, and if so what should you do about it? As always, contact us with any questions you have, or check out our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 3 which covers third party applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Facebook’s Changes: Why Every Life Science Marketer Should Care http://bit.ly/dusOHr

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media:

1. Commentary on social media and science from David Bradley

Where is social media for life scientists headed? Read thought leader David Bradley’s commentary on the subject, and also be sure to read Brian Krueger’s blog post as well. The importance of finding value is underlined, as well as the challenges at hand, and it will help you learn how your company can leverage social media to help and attract life scientists.

2. Life Technologies launches the Molecular Probes Technology Network and the Protocol Exchange for transfection.

Related to the first links, Life Technologies is dabbling in social media communities for life scientists with these new applications, which are focused around protocols and discussions. Will they gain traction? Time will tell, however the similar (from an application perspective) Stem Cell Network they launched a few months ago seems to be languishing. Do the networks meet our STIR Social Media system criteria, which we believe are needed for success? You decide!

3. New Twitter launches…kind of…

Twitter is launching a new web interface, which you can learn about in real time by following the #newtwitter hashtag. The interface will include more multimedia, powered by partnerships with many different companies, and will help Twitter to compete with third party applications (e.g., TweetDeck) and even Facebook. The new interface is being rolled out slowly to users, and the joke on Twitter is that the most experienced users aren’t getting access because they never use the web interface. I have 8 accounts and don’t have it yet! What will it mean for you, the life science marketer? It could make Twitter fill a more relevant niche as more multimedia is added, making it more similar to Facebook, but easier to manage.

4. Social media infographics.

Everybody loves an infographic! Learn and help others in your organization understand many different aspects of social media with these schematics.

All links can be found under the soundbytes tag on Delicious, and sign up for Comprendia blog email updates to get our mix tapes delivered to your inbox.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Links and Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 10/01/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes1001