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We’re really excited that ScienceOnline 2012 registration has started, get your spot during the remaining registration times. It’s a great place to meet bloggers and other digital influencers, and to get inspired as a scientist. Twitter is where the discussions are happening right now, and we’ll be posting a weekly Tweet cloud which contains the most prevalent words being used in status updates tagged with #scio12. Click on a word to be taken to the recent relevant discussions about it archived in the scio12 Twapper Keeper, and contact us if you need additional information.

Recently Facebook announced a new metric, ‘people talking about,’ would be available on the left sidebar of pages below the number of likes. The number shows how many people have interacted with the page by liking it, commenting, or sharing, and it is meant to show how active a page is. We used this number to do an analysis of around 45 life science companies on Facebook, helping us to understand which companies are successfully engaging life scientists, and why they are successful.

Two charts are needed to fully understand the data, and you can also look at the raw data in the Google document. The first chart shows the number of ‘people talking about’ for each page, along with the percent engagement, or this number divided by the total number of ‘likes’ for a page. You can see that Life Technologies holds all five top spots for ‘people talking about’: Invitrogen, Applied BioSystems, Life Technologies, Molecular Probes Handbook Club, and GIBCO Cell Culture. We applaud them for their efforts, and have been tracking their activity, which helps us to understand what the numbers mean. The Invitrogen and Applied BioSystems pages were launched about six months ago, and we noticed growth was slow for months. Recently both pages have shot up in the # of likes, and we are fairly sure this growth is due to advertising. So, since the ‘people talking about’ number includes how many people have liked the pages, these numbers are high for the pages now, and will likely only be sustained with advertising.

We have found that Facebook ‘likes’ can be obtained for about $1 each (contact us to learn more), so by much hand waving you can surmise that LIFE is putting a healthy budget into Facebook advertising, perhaps $10-20K per month.

The numbers in the first chart also speak to great content which the top companies are providing. Engagement will surely go down after the $ is spent if the content does not continue to engage. The chart above is probably biased by the influx of advertising dollars, so we also charted the total number of life science page ‘likes’ below. LIFE has pages that have grown greatly due to the content, the Cell Imaging and Molecular Probes Handbook Pages are excellent examples. This content must be not simply a broadcast of a company’s products, something we’ve discussed before regarding life science companies on Twitter.

How do the companies find the content? We’ve found custom RSS feeds, which pull information about a topic from all over the internet, including news, blogs, and Twitter, to be vital for this tactic, and we can set one up for you.

As a scientist or a former scientist, you may want to know how we can reconcile these two metrics and find the top 10 life science Facebook pages. We tried combining the rankings for both charts, and the result was that the ranking was the same for the top chart. So, unfortunately or fortunately at this time for Facebook, money talks, likely because it is somewhat uncharted territory. There are around 750,000 Facebook users who indicate they have a life science degree (data not shown), so a ‘land grab’ for them will likely be taking place over the next year for those who have the resources and a defined social media strategy. Additionally, companies must think about how to capture the leads from these efforts. Stay tuned, we plan to provide resources for 2012 social media planning soon. Also, check out our own Facebook page, where we keep tabs on life science activity. Here are the top 10 Life Science Facebook Pages for those who like lists:

1. Invitrogen
2. Applied Biosystems
3. Life Technologies
4. Cell Imaging
5. Molecular Probes Handbook Club
6. GIBCO Cell Culture
7. Engaging Epigenetics Experts
8. Promega Corporation
9. New England Biolabs
10. Ion Torrent by Life Technologies

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One of the questions we get frequently is regarding the popularity of social media for different types of life scientists. While it’s true that some computer-intensive fields such as bioinformatics lend themselves to more social media savviness, we find that many different types of life scientists participate. We performed a Social Media Compass™ Twitter analysis (PDF) on the recent American Chemical Society meeting in Denver and found that chemists are very interested in using new media to communicate.

As we covered in a recent post about life science hashtags, they can be used to track events, and we followed the ACS Fall 2011 meeting using the #acsdenver hashtag. There were more than 2000 Tweets from 466 Twitterers from July 30-September 17th, and with 12,000 in attendance, less than 4% of the attendees Tweeted (with the caveat that some Tweets come from people who weren’t at the conference). This is in the normal range for what we see at life science conferences, and we also seen many researchers in ‘listening’ mode, so more likely participated by watching. Also, the Tweets and links will have an impact on search engine results for months or perhaps even years. Our Social Media Compass Twitter Analysis (PDF) tracks the top Twitterers, links, and hashtags, and gives our analysis of the event. Life scientists and companies can use the report for a top level summary of the meeting, to find online influencers, and to follow up on detailed talks and links shared at the meeting. See more details about our Compass reports here.

The American Chemical Society has been instrumental in the adoption of social media by chemists. The most Tweeted link was the live Ustream coverage (now recorded) of some aspects of the event. The organization of a ‘Tweetup’ where Twitterers can meet informally, as well as the deposition of some of the talks on a Lanyard site also contribute to a more socially open atmosphere, and we commend the meeting for creating it.

Chemists are also realizing the challenges that face their industry, and are using social media, including Twitter conversations, to mobilize and affect change. One issue is the fact that ‘chemical’ seems to have become a dirty word in society, and scientists are trying to combat this with new terms that could be used. Chemist employment is another area of much discussion as the job market has seen better days, and ACS is beginning an initiative to encourage entrepreneurship in the industry. Again, the ACS should be applauded for their efforts, as they’ve also implemented the “International Year of Chemistry” and “National Chemistry Week” (this week) campaigns. Other people and entities are also chiming in with resources and applications, with a ‘sub’ hashtag #CINF being used to share web 2.0 chemical information resources such as PubChem3D. The only brands represented in the top 20 Twitterers (not all data shown) were @ChemistryWorld, @J_A_C_S, and @NatureChemistry, and this represents a major opportunity for chemical providers.

The amount of information shared on Twitter for the ACS meeting shows a willingness by chemists to participate in new media, and the information will become more important as the volume increases. We can provide additional information about this meeting or any life science event listed on our calendar, as well as many other types of topics, for more information contact us.
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It’s time to start life science marketing planning for the next year, and we’d like to help you get the most out of your budget with this guide. We’ll assume that the Mayans are wrong and that the world won’t end, at least not before Q4. We’ve updated our life science event planning calendar which has 2012 conference and relevant due dates to help you get abstracts and other items in on time, especially if you add the google calendar to yours so you’ll get reminders. In addition, we’ve added the official Twitter hashtag for each event (where available) so you can track them (see our guide to life science hashtags to learn more).

Life Science Event Listings

Below is our list of life science media kits and editorial calendars. Marketers use them to plan their tactical schedules, see our life science marketing plan series for more details. We’d hoped to find more of the 2012 versions of these schedules, but several are from 2011. We’ll try to update them as they become available, try poking around the websites and contacting the publications yourself to find them.

Our 2011 survey of life science marketers indicated an increase in spending on social media, we’ll repeat the survey for 2012 soon. What are your thoughts on the trends for spending and success in 2012?

Life Science Media Kits, Editorial Calendars & Contacts

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To share this post easily cut and paste: #ls_chat 9/28/2011: Life Science Websites & Mobile Apps Discussion http://bit.ly/pbRx3b

One of the most exciting aspects of our work is developing new ways for our clients to engage their customers. We’ve recently had great success helping our client Emerald BioStructures create a new drug discovery webinar series which has increased their visibility and generated high quality leads. We’d like to share some of the key elements for success we’ve found for life science webinars.

1. Think ‘howto,’ not capabilities. Your company has a lot of know-how that can be shared without exposing proprietary information. Your goal for a webinar series is to position your company as an expert on a topic, and your viewers can either choose to work with you or to DIY the project. Either way, you will have formed a relationship with them as the ‘go to’ company on the topic, and the DIYers might change their minds later. You can start with an existing capabilities presentation, but change it significantly to point out the tips and tricks you used to make projects successful. Think about a presentation that YOU would take time out of your busy day to watch. If you’re having trouble deciding what to cover, look at your web analytics and see what resources are most popular, a tactic we’ve covered earlier.
2. Practice presentation Zen. We’ve all been in life science presentations that are boring, have illegible slides, or go on too long. This simply won’t fly for a webinar, when viewers can easily tune out or leave if the presentation isn’t good. Less is more with regards to slide content, don’t go below font 20 on slides and include only one or two images per slide. Allot 2 minutes for each slide (trust me!), and use the comments section for your personal notes, rather than relying heavily on the text of the slide. Timing is important, we normally do two ‘dress rehearsals’ of webinars beforehand.
3. Use the force. Social media force, that is. Even small companies can get attention for their webinars by building a network on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and then using it for promotion. It’s a self-serving promotion, which we caution against, but consider that the webinar itself has utility for others, especially if you follow #1 for the theme. Use the SEO (search engine optimization) force too–fill your title with important keywords (the web/Google analytics helps here too). Currently, Emerald’s upcoming webinar is on the first page on Google for the search term ‘GPCR webinar.’
4. Listen before, during, and after. Hopefully you’ve chosen the right topics for your webinar series, and have a good network which has gotten you plenty of signups. When registering, ask what participants would like from the webinar. Solicit questions during the presentation (normally via chat, because microphones will be off for a big group) and answer them at the end. You’ll want someone besides the speaker to do this, as it’s just too much for one person. After the webinar, follow up with questions about how the webinar was perceived–this also gives you an ‘excuse’ to follow up on leads.
5. Record & repurpose. These days many apps allow you to record a webinar directly, and we like GoToWebinar because of this feature (note that it only works on PCs currently, although we saw this recent post for recording GoToMeetings with Macs). You want to get as much mileage out of your webinars as possible, for example sending potential clients to recordings to showcase your expertise. Be sure to collect leads via a simple form to watch the recorded webinars, and follow up with them. During your dress rehearsals, practice recording and converting the files for web use so that there won’t be any surprises (and we sometimes set up 2 computers/methods of recording to be safe).
6. Use the apps we’ve found useful. We’ve tried several paid for and free apps for webinars, here are our favorites (note that we are a PC shop–feel free to leave recommendations for Mac programs below):
   • GoToMeeting/Webinar. This software allows you to host a webinar easily and record it. See this detail about converting recordings to be used elsewhere. Note also that GoToWebinar (15+attendees) does not show your full attendee list to the audience, as we’ve seen some do, and GoToMeeting does as well.

   • Camtasia. It took us awhile to buy this video editing application, because we thought the free ones would fit the bill, but we think it’s worth it. You can also use it to record screencasts with or without Powerpoint.
   • Any Video Converter (free), Expression Encoder (free). There is some coding that comes with the GoToMeeting recordings which sometimes causes problems, and running them through one of these programs seems to fix it. Also, @GlennDCitrix is helpful on this matter if you reply to him on Twitter, and here’s another blog post from him for more GoToMeeting recording tips.
   • Audacity (free). If there are problems with your audio that you can’t fix in other software, try this program. Of course, you may be able to obviate this step by purchasing a high quality headset for the webinar presenter. We suggest one that connects to your computer via USB as sometimes we’ve seen delays with those that connect to the audio part.

A life science webinar series will give your company exposure and generate leads. The tools available these days allow companies of any size to produce them. Of course, you’ll need support from management and you’ll likely want R&D staff to present them or be involved. Everyone will benefit from learning how to communicate your company’s offerings clearly and concisely, and the recordings may also help others at your company understand them better.

Our advice? Just do it!

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