At least four times this week I’ve been asked by someone for help and I’ve politely declined. It’s true that I have a large network and knowledge that comes from years of experience in the industry, and do help people quite a bit. However, I see many people who don’t realize how much they can achieve on their own these days, and think that in some cases it’s better in the long run to show them how and why they should take more initiative. Here’s a short list of the benefits of ‘helping yourself,’ with examples of the many ways we are all more empowered now.

Notoriety. Often people ask ‘can you post this news on your LinkedIn group,’ not realizing that they can post it themselves. What’s the benefit for them to post it? If the news is interesting and relevant to the group, they’ll get some ‘good karma’ from group members for pointing out something useful, and expand their reach. Regardless of your motives, being more well known is a benefit (with the exception of those in the witness protecion program ;).

Opportunity. Together with Notoriety, much opportunity comes when you help yourself. Take the example of posting items to LinkedIn groups–let’s say you post an article about stem cells. You’re automatically letting people know that you’re interested in stem cells. Perhaps someone in the field will look at your profile and offer to connect. The possibilities for receiving highly relevant opportunities are endless when you help yourself in this way.

Knowledge. I am often asked to meet people who want me to tell them what I know about San Diego Biotech. Yes, I do ‘get around’ and may have knowledge, some anecdotal, that others don’t, but I am a function of what I read and do. We set up the San Diego Biotechnology Network website with news and information that helps anyone come up to speed quickly. In fact, I know of three reports that just came out over the past few weeks about California Biotech. Other resources are Xconomy, RSS feeds, Twitter… You may say that you don’t understand these new tools, I would argue that they will become as important as radio, TV, and the internet, so buck up and learn them ;) Today, you really have the opportunity to become an expert in a wide variety of fields, for free.

Control. Sometimes people want to post irrelevant items to the LinkedIn groups I manage. Because they are irrelevant, members get irritated and feel as though they’re being spammed, and I have to delete the posting and potentially remove the member. When this happens, I tell the person that it is much more effective to start their own interest group, something we covered more generally earlier. By starting a group, rather than always trying to find one that fits, you have much more control. The topic needs to be chosen carefully, but we all have valuable offerings for others. (Note: this may seem to conflict with what I said in the ‘Opportunity’ section–however, I always tell people if they question whether a posting is appropriate, they can always ask me.)

Almost on cue, Amy Winehouse’s ‘Help Yourself‘ started playing in the background as I wrote this post…corroborating an earlier post. I hope that these examples inspire you to think about more ways you can help yourself and ultimately achieve more of your goals. Also, if I tell you to ‘help yourself,’ that you’ll understand why.

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Yes, I have a very large social media soap box, which I climb upon often to preach. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about talking about it is that it has many benefits that we reap daily. Also, unless you participate in it, it is difficult to understand why it is so powerful. Blogging is one activity that has clear benefits for a business, and we’ve outlined some of the most important ones below.

Opportunity. Comprendia realized this benefit almost immediately after setting up our blog in June 2008. I was invited to blog for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) at the meeting soon afterward, and was also asked in 2009. From these great opportunities for exposure, to regularly receiving complimentary conference admittance, to having a good reason to talk to everyone from prospective clients to famous scientists, we’ve reaped many rewards from our blog.

Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I recently talked to someone at a biotech company who was puzzled by the fact that content on their blog was ranked higher in web searches than the their website pages. Why does this happen? Search engines love blogs and tend towards ranking their posts higher than other content. Now, while getting traffic to your website is only part of the equation, continually creating fresh content for your blog and monitoring what posts gain the most traffic help you to understand your customers better.

Education. What’s new in your field, and what are your customers (and competitors) up to? Blogging is a great way to pull your head out of the daily grind and think about these topics, which are obviously very important for your business. We learn a lot not only in researching for our posts, but also in the feedback we receive after we post, and in participating in the blogging community for our field.

Enjoyment. I’ll admit it, I’m addicted to blogging. It allows me to express myself, begin interesting discussions, and learn what is important to others. The scientist in me likes the possibility of analyzing the information, the marketer in me likes finding the ‘perfect’ image for each post. Am I part of a strange new ‘blogging breed?’ No, if you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’m a strong believer that we’ve been moving towards social media naturally for many years. Some have postulated that traits that make people good bloggers are nothing new.

In summary? Try it, you’ll not only like it, but you and your business will benefit from it. You may even be able to add a few items to this list. Also, software such as WordPress makes it easier than ever, check out our guide to get started.

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We recently did speed networking at a San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN) event , and many of the scientists were pleased with the number of connections they made, and asked when we would do it again. This made me stop and think about the importance of face to face (f2f) interactions, and why they are more important than ever these days. The fact that we can connect online now in more ways than ever is powerful, but it makes face to face interactions and events more important in many ways, and we’ve outlined a few below.

The Personal Touch. At all of our SDBN events, I make a point of verbally inviting everyone I meet to connect with me on LinkedIn. Yes, this benefits me, but it also helps younger scientists feel less shy about reaching out to me online. Seeing that I’m a real person, who wants to help them, is important, and is much more successful than inviting someone I’ve never met via email. The fact that we all get so many electronic messages a day has made us understandably suspicious. Think about it, probably 99.99% of human interaction, over history, has been f2f, and we’re ‘wired’ for it (ironic pun intended ;).

Serendipity. As noted recently by Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman, attending biotech events sets you up for ‘concentrated serendipity,’ since running into highly relevant professionals, whether you know them or not, is very likely. Even though travel budgets are tight, and so much can be done online (the recent ScienceOnline2010 conference even had a presence on Second Life), make an effort to go to conferences and networking events. Being in San Diego, we’ve learned the benefits of attending most of the local conferences even if they aren’t exactly in our area.

Word of Mouth. You likely know I’m a big Twitter fan, and often go to ‘Tweetups,’ or informal get-togethers with people I interact with online. These meetings are great because you get to know people IRL (in real life), which is often much different than through the internet. What I’m always struck with, however, is how almost every time I get some advice that I follow almost immediately. For example, at the last Tweetup, I learned about Google Maps for the BlackBerry (completely awesome, you should be using it–I’ll tell you in person next time I see you ;). Now, we all get all sorts of advice from friends through email, etc. during the day, but hearing it verbally really trumps most electronic forms of communication. Whatever message you’re looking to get across, there is nothing more powerful than word of mouth, it is thought to be thousands of times more effective than other methods.

Chemistry. At Comprendia we love skype and GotoMeeting, they allow us to present information to anyone, anywhere, and they do offer some of the elements of f2f interactions. During a recent GotoMeeting session, however, I told a joke and I have no idea how it went over, as I couldn’t hear laughing. If you know me, you know I like to use humor as an ice breaker. If you’re not f2f, however, the ice may never be ‘broken’ and it is hard to tell whether you’ve got good chemistry. Now, it’s not always paramount for a client-vendor relationship to have good chemistry, but if you’re going to partner with a company, it is very important. Being f2f is the best way to determine whether you understand each other and will be able to work together in the long term.

My point? Get out there and meet each other! Through our experience with the SDBN, we frequently see the wonderful benefits of f2f interactions. Everyone from more senior professionals, who might not have extensive online networks, to those who are more junior and may live in the ‘IM’ world too much, can benefit from more f2f interactions.

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We often get asked by our life science and biotech clients how to calculate return on investment (ROI) for social media activities. Sometimes we are surprised, because the equation is the same as for any marketing activity, and the metrics are often easier to measure than with traditional tactics. We’ve realized, however, that the question is broader than this, and that life science companies want to see the connection between social media activities and their bottom line. We’ll address both concepts in this blog post, and would like to know your thoughts as well.

Like many other ideas that are perceived as being new, social media can indeed be viewed as a new marketing tool, but we arrived at it as a natural progression, and life science companies are a great example. Thus, some of the guidelines we’ve outlined below will be familiar to you, some will be new, and we hope it helps you understand the process of determining ROI for social media in the life sciences.

Establish a baseline. As with traditional marketing, you need to know where you’re starting in order to make sure your marketing is helping you to reach your goals. Several of the metrics are things you’re already tracking, such as sales, growth, web traffic, and conversion. However, you’ll also need to consider more ‘external’ metrics such as mentions on public forums and the ‘buzz’ you create leading up to a product launch. At this stage, do your best to find the information that exists about your company, products, and brand, and realize that it will be an iterative process as you’ll learn more as you go. Thankfully, the cycle times will be much shorter than with traditional metrics, as both the feedback and the tools to measure them are more facile with social media.

Have clear goals. We think this gets at the true ‘heart’ of the ‘ROI for Social Media’ question. Like traditional marketing, you must define your objectives and develop a plan to meet them, with strategies and tactics. What’s new is that you’ll move away from ‘broadcast’ type marketing and into engagement or relationship marketing. Strategies and tactics will differ, because you’ll need to consider things like customer psychographics more carefully and differently, and some of your goals may appear less tangible. For example, one of your goals may be ‘to engage customers more.’ How do you sell this to the management? It will likely correlate with increased revenue, and is no more less tangible than traditional goals such as increasing the number of leads. Some have the perception that social media is random (e.g., people talking about celebrities on Twitter), and can’t possibly lead to a good ROI. If done properly, it definitely can, and having a good plan will lead the way. We’ve provided an outline of our Social Media Charter™ which will help you get started.

Implement and measure. Like traditional marketing, your plan will be a living document which will guide your activities, so follow it and track your results. Besides the traditional, mostly internal ways to measure, there are many ways to measure external metrics, and you’ll soon discover that you’ll be getting more timely, relevant information than ever before. As with traditional marketing, use the equation: ROI = [(Payback-Investment)/Investment] *100. See the table below for some examples. With social media, you’ll find that engaging your customers more may mean that part of the payback comes back differently, such as efficiencies in customer service. For example, if you implement an online forum to answer customer questions, instead of relying solely on phone and email, less time may be needed as the information will be more readily available (think of it as FAQs on steroids). This information accessibility is especially important for life science companies, with highly technical products and customers with questions who often can’t wait. We’re not suggesting you get rid of customer service, rather get them involved–social media will help you to serve customers better and learn more about their needs at the same time.

Examples of Expense and Payback for Calculating Social Media ROI

Rinse and repeat. The beauty of this process is that you will receive information quickly that can be fed back into not only your marketing campaigns, but into improving your products and serving your customers better. You’ll see that your reach is greatly increased and that you’ll receive more qualified leads, which is especially important for smaller companies. These benefits are all part of integrating social media into your overall plan, and we think that once you start seeing the benefits, the ‘ROI for social media’ calculation will be a no-brainer.

However, if you are still questioning ROI for social media in life sciences and biotech, you may want to see more examples and learn more about how it can be relevant to your particular business. We offer free consultations to help get you started. Also, feel free to leave a comment below so we can discuss and answer our ‘FAQs’ (we practice what we preach ;).

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We’re really big WordPress fans here. It’s free, it’s powerful, and it’s popular, meaning that it is constantly improving. Like any free software, however, it doesn’t come with any formal support or guarantees, so keep that in mind when considering things like security and backups. We recommend using the fully featured version of WordPress that is self-hosted, because there is much more control and flexibility, but you can also set up a blog at wordpress.com if you don’t have the capabilities (note that you won’t be able to add all of the plugins below). We covered the basics of WordPress in an earlier post, and provided some resources to learn.

Below is our list of plugins that we automatically install or activate for our own blogs or our clients. They are all available in the full installation, and the newest versions (2.8+) allow you to search for and add them easily via the ‘Plugins->Add New’ feature on the left menu of the Admin panel. Check them out and contact us if you need more help:

1. Google XML Sitemaps. An important part of your blog is to make sure it has good search engine optimization (SEO). Google appreciates ‘help’ from you in knowing when there is new content on your blog, and this plugin will generate a sitemap and send it to Google periodically. This will help your SEO, so we highly recommend installing and configuring it.
2. All in One SEO Pack. This pack makes sure that your blog content is optimized for SEO. It needs to be configured, as well, and is by no means automatic, read the documentation and do as you are directed to improve your SEO–this may mean adding content to each blog post, but it’s worth it.
3. Redirection. This plugin is handy if you want to make ‘friendly’ or memorable URLs for blog posts that you’d like to promote. For example, for our monthly events with the San Diego Biotechnology Network, we make the URL ‘http://sdbn.org/december’ for the December event, etc. This makes it not only easy for our members, but for me in promoting it on Twitter, etc. If you foresee needing this capability, add this plugin.
4. Akismet. This plugin comes installed as default, and it helps enormously to weed out spam. However, there’s a confusing ‘activation’ that you need to do for this plugin. You need to get an account on wordpress.com to get a key to activate it. If you have a self-hosted blog, you’ll likely not need this account for other purposes, so it’s a bit confusing, but activation of the plugin is worth it, as otherwise your email will soon be flooded with either obscene or vague, flattering comments meant only to promote the person who posted it.
5. WP-DB-Backup. It is very important that you make frequent backups of your blog, and this plugin will do that for you. A few caveats–make sure that you set it up and that the backups are stored outside of your ISP. Also, take the time to do an extra check. Make sure that you know how to restore your blog from these backups, and document a procedure for doing so. If your blog is hacked, or goes down, the last thing you want is to have to figure out how to restore it while you’re stressed out that it’s down. It’s also possible that this backup plugin is not best for your system–if not, check around for others.
6. TweetMeme Button. In order to get your blog more exposure, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to share your content. The TweetMeme button allows people on Twitter to share your posts using the button on the top left of every post (including this one). More sharing means more readers, which is always good, and as we covered in a previous post, making things as easy as possible helps as well.
7. Sociable. Along this same vein, the Sociable plugin allows people to bookmark or share your content in a variety of ways. Configure it with the services you think your readers use, and the options will appear at the bottom of each post (including this one). There are even options for creating PDFs and printer-friendly versions of your blog posts, which can help your posts to have more ’spreadability.’
8. WordPress Related Posts. You want your readers to stay on your blog and read as much of your content as possible, right? Showing them related posts helps you with this. It’s pretty self-explanatory, check below for an example.
9. Twitter for WordPress. WordPress sites are by default dynamic, changing often, and this is essential for your website to be more ‘web 2.0′ and compete with other sites. A great way to show your readers that you’re active is to display your Twitter feed in your sidebar, as we do here.

That’s our list of essential plugins, and of course we use others depending on the situation, and we encourage you to browse the WordPress Plugins page for more ideas–they show popular plugins, which can help. Also, look at other blogs and pay attention to what ‘attracts’ you as a reader–chances are those features are a good bet on your blog as well.

Which plugins have you found to be ‘essential’? We’d love to hear, leave them below! The great thing about WordPress is sharing ideas and having all benefit from the collective knowledge.

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I’ve been having some interesting conversations about reaching individuals and groups of people lately. It seems as though psychographics and timing has more of an impact these days as there are so many ways to communicate. With the holidays fast approaching, and the flurry of activity that will likely take place in January, I thought it would be good to start a discussion on the best ways to reach people. Here are some communication tips based on our experiences.

Reaching Individuals. We’ve likely all gotten anecdotal advice from people on reaching a person they know well: “Try emailing him, he’s always online and rarely checks his voicemail.” Of course, if you don’t know the person or anyone who knows them, you might want to try a few different forms of communication and try to make a judgment on how persistent you should be. You can always ask a person shortly after you connect what they prefer, and don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone and embrace other ways to connect.

Communicating to Groups. In some ways this is more difficult than before, in some ways it’s easier. Before, if you could get an article published in a major newspaper or magazine, you were good as gold. Today, however, with so many choices, this is still a coup but not necessarily the way to reach your target audience. Today, a more integrated campaign encompassing several different types of media will likely be needed. Also, as we’ve discussed, the best way to reach the thought leaders in your industry is to create a community for them. Once you have this group created, communicating is a breeze, but getting to that point takes time and lots of cultivation, and I suggest you get started soon!

Choosing the Right Timing. This is important to consider for anyone you’re trying to reach. Rebecca, our Business Development Manager, has mentioned that Friday afternoon is a great time to call someone you don’t know as people seem to be more open to talking. For ‘mass’ electronic communication, the rule of thumb is to schedule emails to arrive Tuesday or Wednesday morning, as people have sorted through weekend messages and have time to read new ones. Conversely, media and bloggers are very busy during the early parts of the week, so to reach them you should avoid these times as evidenced by this post describing how to reach Mashable, one of the hottest blogs for social media.

You should also realize that in this ‘brave new world’ of communicating, you need to choose your methods and messages carefully to ensure your communications stand out from the rest. What are the best ways you’ve found to reach people? Please leave a comment below!

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Throughout my career I’ve had the need to either generate or find images to communicate science, and I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I thought it might be useful to others to provide a summary of resources. Finding and creating expressive images often inspires my blog writing, and it may help you as well. Besides helping you to illustrate your point, images get your posts recognized more easily on Facebook and other third party applications, and some blog themes work best if each post has an image.

Image Sources. Surprisingly, there are several good sources for very affordable (as little as $1), high quality images, see the table below for a listing. The easiest images to use are those which are royalty free which means you just pay one price for the image and can use it indefinitely in accordance with the guidelines provided on the site. Another option is to download images from sites such as Flickr which offer users a Creative Commons (CC) license. This license allows you to use the image for free as long as you credit the account that it came from–here is a nice example using and crediting Flickr images under the CC license. Use the advanced search on Flickr to limit your results to images with CC, and don’t use images that are marked ‘© All Rights Reserved’ as it’s illegal and bad karma.

Modifying Images. You may notice that some of the images I use for blog posts are specific to the subject, and this is done by adding text or other modifications. I’ve been using a free program called Gimp for about 10 years, and even though we have licenses and use Adobe products, I still rely on Gimp daily. It is similar to Adobe Photoshop, allowing you to create and manipulate different layers individually, a very powerful way to make custom images. It does have a steep learning curve, but it’s free and in my opinion the time spent learning it is worth it, especially if you’re on a budget. There are myriad tutorials online, just do a Google search. You should also learn about the different file types to understand how to work with them. Note: you need to save image files in the native format for the program to be able to keep the layers and change later–for Gimp this is the .xcf file.

What types of images should you use? That’s up to you, but it’s a good idea to stay consistent to reinforce the brand of your blog. On the Comprendia blog, we use simple images which have a level of abstractness–a single item or person. If possible, try to be consistent in where you place the images in posts to reinforce branding as well. We’ve summarized the list of resources below, and feel free to give us more ideas and we’ll add them.

Thanks to Holly Barnes of Eton Biosciences for sending me some of the resources for this post.

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You may have talked with or met Rebecca Watson-Beattie by now, she’s done a great job reaching out to our clients and partners. With a background in business development, sales, marketing, and science, Rebecca is a perfect addition to our team. She understands the challenges biotechnology and life sciences companies face and shares our passion to help them launch and grow. Rebecca is very organized, focused, and pleasant, and we chose her because we think she’ll really help those who work with us to thrive. Check out Rebecca’s Bio for more information, and feel free to reach out to her.

You know I am one of social media’s biggest cheerleaders, especially for life science and biotech as I see enormous potential. However, when planning a social media (SM) campaign, there are some important things to remember about what it isn’t. This list is meant to help you plan and to sell SM to your organization by understanding ways that it differs from what we might expect.

1. Instant. Social media campaigns take time. If done correctly, the end result can be worth much more than what you’d get out of a traditional marketing campaign, but it’s not like flipping on a switch. Keep this in mind during planning, and and define clear objectives for the growth of your campaign, for example number of twitter followers or increase in web traffic. Of course, your ultimate objectives are likely to increase revenue, but these are good indicators that you’re on the right track.
2. A No Brainer. You don’t have to look far to see social media campaigns that have not gained traction or have reflected badly on the company that implemented them. There are myriad consultancies who will claim that ‘it will be as easy as setting up some accounts,’ but the truth is that there is a lot of planning that needs to go into a campaign. Like traditional marketing, and in order to integrate with your existing strategy and tactics, you must understand the customer, your product’s positioning, the competition, and the tools to succeed.
3. Your Mouthpiece. It is tempting to see a large LinkedIn group or a forum as a place where you can talk about yourself or your products…for free! However, if you are only using these venues for this purpose, it will soon become evident and the group members and moderator will tire (and may banish) you. What’s better? Create your own group and cultivate a community that cares about what you care about. Follow the 90/10 rule: spend 90% of the time helping, 10% promoting yourself–if people appreciate and respect you, they’ll listen to what you say. The absolute worst thing you can do in social media is to be labeled as a spammer or as only caring about yourself.
4. A Free Lunch. Along the same vein as the usage of ‘free’ advertising such as LinkedIn groups, there are some that think that Social Media is their way to market their product for free. Now, I do think there are lots of ways that you can save money using social media, but…you may remember someone telling you that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and SM is no exception. Your costs will likely shift from print advertising to online, and from paying fees for broadcast-type Ads (banners, etc.) to strategies, tools, and perhaps consulting for building your campaign theme and implementing it correctly.
5. A Panacea. Social media does not defy the rules of marketing or common sense. If you have a product that your customers do not need, no amount of SM will help you. What’s great about it, though, is that you’ll receive more feedback than you have ever had before, and you’ll be able to turn this information into products that your customers need.

Sound complicated? The best way to understand it is to get your feet wet and start participating. If you’d like a free consultation, we can help you better understand how to succeed in the social media landscape that your life science or biotechnology company operates in.

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Once again inspired by Sally Church, I decided to look at the Comprendia Tweet Cloud. What is that, you ask? It is similar to a tag cloud, a visual representation of words used to ‘tag’ or describe a set of entries. For example, if you save bookmarks application Delicious, you tag each with a set of words (you could use ’social media, biotech, twitter’ for this link), and a tag cloud is representative of all of your bookmarks.

A Tweet Cloud looks at all of a user’s updates on Twitter and depicts the words used most frequently, the largest being shown in the largest font. Since a picture is worth a thousand words (pun intended) look at the image to the right (your eyes are probably already there, aren’t they?).

You can see what topics dominate my tweets, giving you a snapshot of my theme or ‘voice’ on Twitter. Why is this important? If you’re using social media for business, you need to have a clear objective and ensure that your tactics align. It’s OK to add some ‘personality’ to your accounts, and talk about other things from time to time, as this helps to engage your community (and is much more fun ;). You should use these types of analysis tools on your accounts from time to time to make sure you’re saying what you need to say.

Staying true to your objectives and brand are one part of what we call a Social Media Charter™ (SMC), a plan which can integrate nicely with your current marketing plans. Like a marketing plan, an SMC uses information gained from your customers, products, and competition to outline strategies and tactics to meet your objectives. A living document, the SMC provides guidance to all who participate in your social media activities, which is needed so that your tactics can be aligned and readjusted as necessary.

Learn more on our Social Media Capabilities page and check out our blog to learn more–you can see from our Tweet Cloud that we talk about these topics quite a bit.

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