You’ve put together your overall life science social media strategy (if not, see Workshop 1 and our other social media training) and it includes third party applications such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. How do you use these applications to reach out to your customers effectively? The applications are all different, requiring individual strategies, tactics, and methods for determining metrics. Join us August 31st in San Diego or via the web to learn the ‘Rule of 3’s’ for third party social media, and you’ll start reaching out to your customers like never before (almost like a 3D movie, you could say).

In this four hour interactive workshop, offered in San Diego and via webinar, you will learn everything you need to know to implement campaigns on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, including:

• Strategies
  • What strategies and themes work with life scientists?
  • Which third party social media applications are my customers using, and how do I target them there?
  • How do I fulfill corporate goals and provide value at the same time?
• Tactics
  • How can I get the most out of my time spent on 3rd party social media?
  • What are the best tips and tools for each application?
  • Where can I find the content I need?
  • How do I get direct leads from 3rd party applications?
  • How can I quickly understand the etiquette for each application?
• Metrics & ROI
  • How do I measure success using external and internal metrics?
  • My management still doesn’t understand the value of third party social media applications–how can I convince them?

As always, we’ll give you plenty of examples specific to life science to help you see things in context. As a Participant You Will Receive:

1. Printed workshop materials
2. A highly interactive presentation session from Mary Canady, customized to your needs and using real examples from life science and biotechnology
3. Worksheets designed to help you get social media launched at your company
4. Hands-on, online training and feedback from Comprendia during the session
5. Free follow-on session with Comprendia
   1. Review of workshop ‘homework’
   2. Guidance for next steps

The workshop will take place from 8 a.m.- 12 p.m. PT August 31st in San Diego and via GoToMeeting webinar for other regions. The cost per person is $350 (with a $700 group rate available for up to 4 people from a single company), sign up below and contact us with any questions. Please note that the workshop will be focused on industries with no FDA regulated products. In San Diego, the workshop will be held at Tango del Rey in PB. Deadline for signup is August 25th.

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.

Comprendia is dedicated to improving communication in life science and biotechnology, and towards that end we are big proponents of social media. Our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2: The 4 B’s of First Party Applications interactive webinar will take place July 28th from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. Pacific Time. During this four hour workshop, you’ll learn how to build web 2.0 applications including blogs, forums, wikis, and how to generate meaningful content for life scientists. For each strategy or application, you’ll learn the 4 B’s crucial to attracting scientists and achieving a good ROI: the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech Examples. Register here or contact us if you’re interested in a private or customized version of the workshop.

We also offer training for social media applications such as Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, and Facebook, check out our Social Media Training and Workshops page for more information. We can also customize the training for your business, contact us for more information.

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago in June of 2008, I started Comprendia. Colleagues at Stinson Brand Innovation helped me with a logo and branding, and I set up the Comprendia website using the free WordPress platform. Now, in June 2010, we find ourselves as a two year old company with what I consider to be a good reputation and solid experience. Maybe I have too many friends with little kids, but I can’t help but to try to think about what we’ve learned, and what we have yet to learn, from a two year old child’s perspective. Here goes!

Sharing is good. A lot of what we find ourselves doing is providing resources for others, whether they’re scientists in the San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN), life science marketing professionals, or any of our network of around 9,000 biotechnology professionals. Are we good people? Sure, but we also see benefits from sharing daily, which gives us a business case to continue. We get new leads, we learn from our peers and our clients, and we get many perks from being connected, such as media access to conferences, etc. In our two years, we’ve definitely learned the benefits from sharing, much as a two year old learns that sharing a toy is the right thing to do.

Learn from your mistakes. I love telling people about the mistakes I made early on, so we can all learn from them. Here is one: I set up a social network for biotech marketers, thinking it would be a great way for us to share experiences and connect. What I didn’t realize in these early days is that many of these free standing networks take a LOT of effort to get going, because they don’t become useful until a minimum number of people join, something called the network effect. So, the group didn’t ever take off, but we did succeed in creating a great group on LinkedIn, where we can take advantage of the fact that so many biotech marketers are already there. We learned from this mistake, and make sure that our clients don’t make them as well. We’ve encapsulated these ideas in our STIR Social Media system to help life science companies create successful campaigns and applications.

You can’t do it all by yourself. We’re lucky to have many great partners who help us to meet our clients’ needs, including Stinson Brand Innovation and WHITECOAT Strategies. We’ve also been very lucky to hire Rebecca Watson-Beattie as Business Development manager, she has brought a wealth of experience and focus to Comprendia. If you’ve met her you know, she’s a great asset and a pleasure to work with. We’ll also be bringing on Julie Mazziotta soon as our WordPress Web and Social Media Manager. Julie’s web, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media experience will help us and our clients to grow. Related to the first point, through our network, we continue to meet exceptional companies and individuals to work with and are very excited about the capabilities we will be able to offer our clients in the months and years to come.

Saying ‘No’ can be empowering. Every small business goes through growing pains–what should our focus be, and which projects should we take on? Like a two year old, we are learning that there are choices we can make that will affect our lives. Sometimes this means saying ‘no’ to some project areas and focusing on where we can have the biggest impact. This strategy benefits everyone, as we prosper, and our clients get the best we have to offer. So, while we don’t say ‘no’ quite as much as a terrible two year old, we hope that by continuing to focus on our strengths, that we’ll be able to help companies focus on theirs as well. If you’ve been reading this blog, hopefully you know, but to clarify, we are a full service marketing firm specializing in web-based tools and social media.

What we can do is quite remarkable. We hope that by building Comprendia and the SDBN from the ground up, you can see what is possible, even for a small outfit. In our Bootstrapping Biotech event with the SDBN last year, we talked about all the cheap or free tools which empower small companies, and our dream is that our success can help yours as well. Like a two year old, we can think about what it was like to crawl, and walk, and now how great it is to now be able to run. Running along with others is perhaps the most fun of all, and our dream is that you’ll all realize how much is possible with today’s tools, and leverage them for your benefit.

It’s a big, wonderful world we live in. These past two years have been nothing short of fantastic. We’ve met so many great people, from famous scientists, to amazing entrepreneurs (latest here), to professionals who are making the best of this bad economy. The number of fantastic life science and biotechnology product and application ideas we’ve heard about over these two years leaves us in awe, and like a two year old we’re anxious to explore and see what’s around the next corner. We sincerely hope that, also like a two year old, we’ve been able to soak up a fraction of your collective knowledge and make sense of it in a way that benefits the community.

Like a two year old, we will grow a lot over the next few years, perhaps in ways we cannot imagine right now. We’ll be unveiling some great client projects over the next year, which we think will open up some new doors in life science marketing. Stay tuned!

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Comprendia Turns Two! What We’ve Learned, and Are Still Learning… http://bit.ly/avg7j6

Our first Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop went over well, with IRL (in real life) and virtual sessions full of marketing and business development professionals eager to learn how to attract scientists and improve their return on investment with social media. When polled anonymously, 100% of attendees indicated that they would suggest the workshop to colleagues, and we continue to incorporate your feedback to make the workshops even better. In the first workshop we covered Comprendia’s STIR Social Media™ system which defines the four qualities needed for a successful campaign: Sticky, Transparent, Intuitive, and Resonating.

We discussed in detail how social media is a natural extension of the activities life science companies have been engaged in for years, and that, as with all marketing, strategies must come before tactics. If you missed the IRL and virtual events, don’t despair, you can still order it on demand through the Comprendia website, and we highly suggest it before you attend the second workshop. The Workshop 1 webinar is roughly 3 hours long, and we’ll give you a ‘day pass’ in which you can watch it any time that day, and we’ll send you the printed presentation as a booklet beforehand.

Our second workshop will focus on first party social media, or applications and strategies which are integrated into company websites:

• Web 2.0
• Blogs
• Forums
• Wikis
• Content Generation

We’ll focus on the 4 B’s which will help you create successful first party applications and campaigns, which are the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech Examples. As in the first workshop, we’ll focus on the questions that really matter to you, including strategies that work with scientists, metrics, return on investment, and implementation. We know that seeing real examples helps you to think about applying the ideas your business, so we’ll spend plenty of time on this as well. We’ll have wifi so you can bring your computer, ask lots of questions, and head back to the office ready to get started. Sign up!

Who Should Attend: Business Development and Marketing professionals who provide products or services in a non-regulated environment and are interested in using social media to increase sales, leads, or visibility. Examples: companies who sell research-only products or services to scientists or small to mid-size biotechnology companies that need more visibility. Contact us if you have questions. Completion of Social Media and Life Science Workshop 1 is recommended but not required (details on ordering the Workshop 1 webinar will be given during registration).

As a Participant You Will Receive:

1. Printed workshop materials
2. A highly interactive presentation session from Mary Canady, customized to your needs and using real examples from life science and biotechnology
3. Worksheets designed to help you get social media launched at your company
4. Hands-on, online training and feedback from Comprendia during the session
5. Free follow-on session with Comprendia
1. Review of workshop ‘homework’
2. Guidance for next steps

This is our second in a series of Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshops. Sign up for updates to our blog and you’ll be the first to hear about our workshops and training. Contact us if you’re interested in having these workshops customized for your company.

Check out our Workshops and Training page to see when this workshop is offered next.

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.

On November 14th, Comprendia Founder Mary Canady will be presenting an overview of San Diego Biotechnology at a local symposium geared towards life science postdocs and hosted by UCSD, The Scripps Research Institute, and Burnham Institute. Dr. Canady’s career, first as a local researcher and now as a small business owner working with biotechnology companies, gives her a unique perspective on transitioning from science to business. Check out the website for more information and to register.

If you’ve been following our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog, you likely know that we are ‘in the know’ about social media. We’ve used it to grow our own company and the San Diego Biotechnology Network, and we’ll be featuring our work with other companies soon. Check out our Social Media Capabilities page to learn more and to get started!

Our founder Mary Canady realized a lifelong dream today. She was able to combine her love of the 80’s with her love of science in a single Xconomy post, check it out! Seriously, though, the BIL:PIL event represents a ’sea change’ in how important issues such as health care will be more accessible our input as scientists and patients, and I highly suggest attending it.

If you’ve been following along with the Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, you know that we provide guidance for life science and biotech companies to start and grow. We’re taking this from virtual to IRL (in real life ;) at our October 29th Bootstrapping Biotech event with the San Diego Biotechnology Network. We’ve lined up some excellent speakers who will cover everything from getting funded to strategic and tactical marketing and social media for your company or products. We’ve had a lot of interest so far, even outside of San Diego, and really think that a lot of great, synergistic connections will be made at the event. Even if you don’t work at a small company, we think you’ll be able to learn and meet those who can help you make the most out of your marketing budget. As always, we’re open to feedback as to what you’d like to see–leave a comment here or on the SDBN site.